What Will You Do With Your 30,000 Days?
“But one doesn't expect out of life what one has already learned that it cannot give, but rather one begins to see more and more clearly that life is only a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here.”
Vincent Van Gogh
Life itself as a concept has a scale of almost unimaginable vastness. 8 billion people on Earth each living a unique life. Yet even a single life has its own degree of vastness. Based on my birth year and corresponding life expectancy, my own life could easily extend for 80+ years.
Certainly the old cliches contain that kernel of truth that cliches do. The days are long, and years short, etc. But we don’t have to be in Rent to wonder “how do we measure a life?”
On one of my regular podcast listens, an investor, Chris Davis, recently made the case for an interesting way of looking at life. From his perspective, he felt it helpful to think of life in 10,000 day increments. He argued that the first 10,000 (ending mid-way through the age 27) is about breadth - learning a wide range of things and building relationships. The second 10,000 is about depth. The period of time from the late 20s through mid-50s is about going deep in career, community, and family. The final 10,000 is about breadth again. Building new relationships and experiences - that can benefit from hard earned wisdom, as well as keep the mind sharp.
This perspective has really resonated with me. Not only is it easy to understand and explain - there is a degree of intuitiveness to it that makes sense. That first 10,000 daybreak point seems to correlate with the development of the pre-frontal cortex that happens around 26ish. And we know that around retirement age, there are a number of shifts that occur. While mid-50s is early for retirement, I know many who make transitions to second careers, adjust their work-life intensity, have health challenges, or see many other life events that result in meaningful changes around this period
In a series of posts, we are going to walk through a number of considerations for each 10,000 day window. This is meant to be more descriptive in nature, as opposed to thorouhly prescriptive about the right way to navigate these dynamics. As Charles Kettering said, “a problem well-stated is half-solved.”
For the last several months I have been thinking, reading and writing about each stage. One consistent thought that has emerged is the idea that each period has at its core a series of questions that we each much answer. How well we answer those questions has a significant impact on how well we move from stage to stage. If we have failed to learn the lessons inherent to the current stage, our next stage's success will be limited.
For example, I regularly see individuals in the final 10K unable to adapt because they are still tied to the norms and rules of middle stage. They cannot become elders and mentors because their self-conception is still dependent upon achievement. Similarly, is a middle life crisis anything more than an attempt to regain that which was present in the first stage?
First 10,000 - Crafting the Dream
Childhood, adolescence, and the early twenties are fascinating in many ways. Each day/week/month/year contains a tremendous amount of change. In short order, you transition from losing teeth, to driving, to leaving home. Across all this, the brain is growing and developing, attempting to absorb and incorporate everything from content knowledge, to relational dynamics, to hand-eye coordination, and more.
In addition to all this foundational learnings, two primary questions seem to surface - "who am I" and "what do I want out of my life." From their phrasing alone, these questions are inward directed. They are the questions of a new self attempting to differentiate and emerge from its “chrysalis.”
The first question is well publicized and considered. Instead, I would like to consider the second question a bit more deeply, as it seems less commonly thought about.
What do I want out of my life?
This is a sizable question to consider, and it’s not easy to answer.
A disclaimer first - for some, circumstances, resources, and trauma may prevent them from either having the opportunity or developing the ability to answer such a question. Working through this is weighty, tremendous work. Today, we are only contemplating those with the privilege and opportunity to consider life closer to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy.
It is a timeless one though as it cuts to the core of what living life well may be. Sigmund Freud suggested an answer to the question highlighting that the two most critical dimensions of life are work and love.
And both of these domains loom large in the first 10,000 days. Determining what will be your life's work is a thrilling and terrifying question. It lurks in the background of pressure around grades in high school, what college to attend, and where to go after college graduation. It certainly sits behind the frenzied efforts of 'snowplow' parents attempting to chart a linear, “up and to the right” trajectory of success and achievement for their children.
These first 10,000 embody a tremendous amount of preparation - formal education, practical learning, and life experience. Hopefully it provides the raw material to begin to consider a question about what we want out of life. But as a recent college grad told me, “there are just so many possibilities!”
As an answer begins to form, what emerges can best be described as the ‘dream.’ The dream could be particular job. It could be the house with a fence and 2.2 children and dog. The specifics of it are unique to the person and in fact, not the point of it. It is the directionality of it that matters.
Crafting a dream defines what the ideal could be - a direction which while somewhere off in the future, offers a destination compelling enough to march off in search of. It orients our actions and gives us purpose. We are doing these things because we want these outcomes. It has a wonderful degree of causality, a clear sense of if / then outcomes. Simply stated, it offers a vision of life as simple as '“if we pursue this path, then these things will occur.”
For many, such a dream emerges fully formed. On my freshman hall in college was a guy who had wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon since high school. Guess what he’s doing now? Just that. It was a weighty, orientating dream that resonated for him across the struggles of med school, residency, fellowships, etc. For others, the dream may take longer to emerge - and that’s ok too.
Coming into the end of this first 10,000 days, life hopefully stands as a blankish canvas. The new adult has developed skills, acquired some basic resources, and formed a set of relationships. From that position, they are ready to approach the canvas and begin painting.
The dream, if scaled appropriately in one’s mind, is nothing more than a working “theory of life.” A view of how life works, what are its constituent parts, and where happiness may be found.
For those who chose not to dream, they seem stuck at the starting line. Not knowing where to go / what to do, they chose to stay put. To a degree, this is what sits at the core of many “failures to launch.”
The Middle 10,000 - When The Dream collides with the brick wall of reality...
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” —Jim Carrey
Middles are messy - we know this instinctively. Middle films of trilogies that are great (Godfather Part II, Empire Strikes Back) are the exception, most are garbage (here’s looking at you Cars II).
As someone who personally sits almost exactly halfway through the second 10,000, there is immediacy and reality to the uniqueness of the position of middle-age. While I cannot reflect back on the period, I can try to get to the 30,000 foot level and offer a few bits of real time commentary (supplemented by a lot of reading from others about the period).
This middle period of time is marked by a number of transitions. These could be everything from the emerging centrality of parenting, moving to more seniority at work, to the unexpected loss of parents and friends.
What then is the work of the middle stage? Or as we phrased it earlier - what is the central question of this period?
Similar to the first 10,000, I believe here to there is a central question to be asked / answered, though it can be phrased in 2 ways.
The first phrasing of the question is “who am I if what I thought I most wanted in the world doesn’t come to pass?” This is the question of a failure to achieve one’s dream. The second is “who am I if I do get what I most wanted in the world and realize that it wasn’t enough.” The second phrasing is the question of if one achieves the dream and realizes the dream itself was wrong or inadequate.
Said more directly, the question is this - when (not if) the dream of the first 10,000 does not bring us everything we thought it would, what do we do next?
If the first 10,000 is about dream making, this period is about waking up to the reality that dreams are just that. This realization forces us to ask and ultimately answer the deeper questions to truly understander who we are.
This process is inherently uncomfortable. And for many, avoidance is the preferred strategy. Toxic addictions may surface as a way to soothe the disquieted soul. Midlife crises may attempt to distract from these gnawing existential concerns.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Still for others, rather than the uncomfortable, deep work to process through the failure of the dream to give you what you want, many people double down on the strategy. They insist that what they are looking for out of life is found in the next success, the next big thing.
They disregard the learnings they might have acquired and push through with more effort. Arguably, this is akin to the business leader who notes that the company is losing money on every unit sold, but assures his board that they will make up the losses with higher volumes.
Either approach, avoidance or doubling down, inhibits the acquisition of the wisdom this stage has to teach. Importantly, the repercussions of this loss of wisdom often is not felt until the final 10,000 window.
Instead, working through this question about the failure of the dream brings us to the second significant question of middle age is how do we find contentment in going deeper?
At the first level, this is about going deeper in our own self-knowledge and understanding of the world. But is applicable even more broadly.
Consider - when we are younger much of the enjoyment and pleasure of life derives from novelty. Variety, of course, being the spice of life. Yet as we age, while novelty has a time and place, there is simply less of it available.
Instead, our enjoyment must shift to appreciation, going deep to mine the uniqueness of something. Instead the quest is learning to drive enjoyment and pleasure from the depth of an experience.
In order to support this shift, I believe this is why you see certain activities / hobbies / interest consistently become of interest in middle age. For example, as my collegiate statistics professor demonstrated, the odds of playing the same hand of Bridge in your lifetime is infinitesimally small. Similarly, golf is different every day - depending on weather, hole position, and your physical condition.
There is a meme making the rounds on the web that states, "after turning 35, men must make a decision: to either get really into World War 2 history or really into smoking meat." WWII history is limitless in its complexity and depth, no doubt making it an attractive hobby.
The common thread across all these is that your enjoyment of them is inexhaustible - there is really no end to your engagement with them. They have enough embedded complexity to support your interest. This evolution could also be framed as finding joy in the process vs. only the outcome.
Coming to this sort of enjoyment may come naturally for some. For others, whether due to personality type or our own dependence on the steady dopamine drip of novelty offered by social media, we may come to it kicking and screaming.
The Final 10,000 - Elder doesn't mean old!
This has been the hardest of the three sections of this piece to write, and has occupied most of the several months long period of time I’ve been working on / off on this series.
Before beginning this section, I want to acknowledge the danger of commenting on a life stage where you lack personal experience. And while I cannot offer a point of view in-formed by direct experience, I can share what I have observed and read.
So where to begin? How about here:
No One Actually Believes They Are Old!
Growing up, we would often make the 14 hour drive from our home in Virginia to deep south Alabama to see my grandparents for spring break / Easter. Frequently, my dad, my brother, and I would attend a Sunday school class with my grandfather. The first time we attended this class of septuagenarians and octogenarians and observed how they interacted, I realized that they joked around with one another the same way I did with my friends. Guys, it seems, will be guys - no matter the age.
In a recent Atlantic article, the author describes a study of nearly 1,500 people in which the researchers found that on average most people’s subjective sense of their age is consistently about 20 percent younger than their actual age. How old we are in our head does not correlate with how old the person we see in the mirror is.
This reality I believe is critical to understanding this final 10,000 day window. From the age of 55, you have entered into this window. But arguably for the majority of it - you are not going to feel like you are in it. While you technically may be the ‘senior statesman’ or ‘elder,’ those terms are going to feel as dated to you as your grandmother’s shag carpet. Perhaps even more so, depending on how many vials of Botox you used on your last med-spa visit.
Being old is a newish phenomenon
We should recognize as well that for long portions of human history, old age was infrequent and uncommon. Consider, at our country’s founding - life expectancy was 33. By 1900, it was 43, and even as recently as 50 years ago it was 58. Today, it sits in high 77s, with projections of further longevity for children currently being born.
The point being that our current sort of longevity is unique in human history, and perhaps this may contribute to the challenge / opportunities of this window of time.
We simply do not have as much collective knowledge about how to steward longevity.
How then should one approach this window of time?
Across this series of posts, we have contemplated a key question that we must answer for each 10,000 day period.
For the first 10,000, the question was What do I want out of my life?
For the second 10,000, the question was when I don’t get what I want or when I do (and realize it wasn’t enough), who am I?
I would offer that the question of the final third is what will I do with my time now that I know who I am? Said differently, in light of my now undeniable mortality, what will I do that might mark my time upon the earth?
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
Jack London
Deconstructing the question further yields three constituent parts: time, self-knowledge, and action.
As one’s time grows shorter, counterintuitively the reality of one’s own mortality can be a tremendous gift, and not just a harbinger of existential woe. Atul Gawande in his wonderful book Being Mortal highlighted the reason for this in the work of Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen. Carstensen's key hypothesis is that "how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have" also known as "socioemotional selectivity theory."
When our time horizon [i.e. proximity to death] shortens, the choices we make and things we prioritize change dramatically. Conversely, when time horizon extends, those choices return to prior priorities. Gawande indicates that this explains why near death experiences may cause someone to make life changes that tend to not persist. The further you get from the experience, its acuity dulls considerably.
A gift of the final 10,000 day window can be the focus that the increasing brevity of time remaining provides.
Now that I know who I am
Determining what to do with the time remaining requires a resolution of the core question of the second 10,000 day window - who am I? Far too often, when I observe and spend time with folks in this window, it becomes clear that they never actually completed the work of the second phase.
For many, the busyness of the window allowed them to bypass the uncomfortable self-work required. Or for many, they continued to redouble their efforts towards pursuing The Dream - despite a gnawing sense that it is not providing what they are looking for.
The well integrated life does not allow you to move to the next thing, until putting the prior thing to bed. As we will discuss in greater detail below, having an clear picture of oneself, having wrestled with one’s past (good, bad, traumatic) in all its complexity, forms the bedrock for the engagement possible in the period ahead.
It is important not to skip or try to shortchange this process. Well integrated self-awareness provides a tremendous of leverage by de-centering the ego and the need for self protection.
What to do with the time that is left?
The feeling that time is increasingly limited can serve to focus the mind and clarify decision making, while at the same time, it can lead to a dangerous sense of pressure (honestly not all that different from the pressure a twenty-something may feel to make something of their life).
In the space remaining, I’d like to consider how to begin to deconstruct the use of one’s time.
First, this is not about legacy! There is a tremendous amount of press and ink spilled about how to create one’s legacy (especially in certain financial circles). This is a fool’s errand. Legacy, your legacy, is not something you get to choose. By definition, legacy is how people will refer to us after we go. Unlike public relations, we do not get to control the narrative.
Think of the apocryphal story of Alfred Nobel. Upon reading his own obituary accidentally printed that referred to him as The Merchant of Death, he was inspired to change his legacy by funding the Nobel Prize.
But did it work?
The Nobel Prizes were begun in 1901. How many of Nobel’s contemporaries are still in public consciousness today - few. Yet, today we reference Noble because of the prize, but also because of the story of what prompted him to action. Despite his own efforts to remove the narrative, it is inextricably linked - he is both the Merchant of Death, and the founder of the Prize.
We certainly don’t know how Nobel would interpret this legacy - but I think it just highlights that legacies are complicated.
So if ‘legacy-management’ is not the ultimate goal here, what is?
Many call this period retirement, though I am not sure that is helpful. While there may be a transition in employment status, this window is simply too long to rest indefinitely. For some, there is the removal of the economic intensity for full time vocation.
Savings and good fortune often generate enough financial wealth to limit or remove the monetary reasons for work. There are many reasons why this period may involve turning down the dial. A desire for greater balance in life, a chance to pursue other priorities often times entail an moderation in activity.
This stage is also marked by a shift in familial roles. For most, not necessarily all, the most intense phases of parenting will have concluded. Empty nesting may have come and gone as children leave home, individuate, and begin to establish their own households. Grandparenting may begin. Similarly, you may also be caretaking or supporting the care of aging parents.
Across all the major domains of life, there is a change in how you engage with them in the final 10,000.
In prior days, the role most frequently assumed was referred to as eldering.
But I have yet to meet anyone enthusiastic about adopting that title - it sounds awful - and is in desperate need of a branding consultant.
Elder is simply too close to elderly - which brings connotations of frailty and feebleness.
In the absence of a better term, what does applied eldering look like?
First, if the elder has actually wrestled with themselves as discussed above, a key transformation can begin to occur in this window of time. Simply, doing can now be separated from being. For far too much of prior life, the work of our lives is too closely tied to our sense of self; self-importance, self-security, etc. etc. This sort of existential weight sitting behind our work only further exacerbated the stress of it. The late Pastor Tim Keller often referred to this as the ‘work beneath the work.’
From a place of security, we can now begin to apply, perhaps for the first time, the concept of ‘right effort’ to our work. Right effort, a Buddhist concept, considers the application of the right level of force required, but nothing beyond. If we can begin to consider our work from right effort - it frees us to consider whether we have to be the one to actually do the work, or do we get to serve instead as the catalyst?
In chemistry, a catalyst starts a chemical reaction, but is not required necessarily for the reaction to continue. Earlier in our lives, our engagement is much more akin to the pig in the preparation of breakfast vs. the chicken (who as the joke only contributed when compared to what was required of the pig to make sausage).
But now as elders, we may not be required to be as fully engaged. Instead, we can support, encourage, inspire, and offer wisdom to others. This is why so many in this window of life find much joy in serving as mentors, coaches, and other forms of wise counsel to others.
Their sage input into the lives of others enables a scale of impact that may have been unthinkable early in life. The focus required to do a singular thing well and at tremendous depth of the middle 10,000 is inherently limiting. A mentor well equipped to support others, scales their impact.
But this scale is only possible if they are willing to step aside and let the protege perhaps exceed the elders own prior heights. This is a tremendous risk and is untenable to those who remain insecure in who they are. You cannot support and cheer on another, who may surpass even your own greatness, if you have not finally and satisfactorily answered the place of achievement in your life. One cannot become Yoda if they still believe themselves to be uniquely and singularly capable of Skywalker-esque feats.
In other domains, we see this wisdom present. Athletes who hold records instinctively know the tenuous tenure of their place in the record books. What was once impossible will eventually become commonplace. They cannot begrudge those who come later and do even more for their efforts - in the same way that they too benefited from the ‘giants on whose shoulders they stood’ for their own achievements.
How to begin?
It is actually quite simple - the elders in my life have done 2 things exceptionally well. First, they saw me. They took notice of my presence. Secondly, they ask lots and lots of questions.
One of the greatest certainties I have learned in life is that we all our eager to share about ourselves. We want to be known. When someone takes the time to hear our story, it is a tremendous gift.
The key here is that the best elders use questions, not pontificating nor lecturing. Most people can dictate an answer to a problem that they think they know the answer to. But when the answer is given, the hearer does not learn how to reach the answer on their own. Moreover by shortcutting the path to the answer, it can subtly signal a lack of trust or a limited belief in the hearer’s capability to reach those conclusions on their own.
The true elder learns use questions masterfully, and knows that through the asking they can still provide guidance and wisdom.
Those in this third 10,000 day window have a unique opportunity to consolidate a life’s work, and then serve as a blessing to others. Hopefully freed from purely selfish pursuits, the true elder can seek the good of the whole. They can engage in the lives of others for the pleasure of knowing another person, and the desire to support and encourage them in their life’s journey.