If you’re reading this at age forty, you have around 2,000 weeks left to live.
At sixty, which I reached five years ago, it is approximately 1000 weeks.
It’s a startling thought when you first encounter it. Not because it’s dramatic, but because that is the calculation. Most lifetimes, at least in advanced industrial nations, stretch to roughly 80 years — about 4,000 weeks. By midlife, at the age of forty, half of those have already slipped quietly behind you, often unnoticed; time has just passed.
But the average life expectancy will be different depending on where you live in the world. There are many factors that will determine how long we might live, and they are not equal across the world.
So, I looked into the numbers a little deeper.
According to the United Nations, the current average age at death for people across the world is around 73.3 years, which is 3822 weeks. For women, the average is 76 years (3963 weeks/912 months), and for men, 70.7 years (3687 weeks/848.4 months). It is well known that women, on average, live longer than men.
Weeks are an uncomfortable unit of measurement, and 4000 does seem a lot. Years can feel generous, decades abstract. But weeks are tangible. They are ordinary, repetitive, something that we feel and easy to waste. It is seven days of life — the here and now — they come and go.
Many of us spend the first half of life building careers, working, raising families, chasing stability, and waiting for the “right time”. Somewhere along the way, we forget to ask what we actually want our remaining weeks to look like. We assume there will always be more time later.
There won’t.
Our time on this planet is finite, and the clock is always ticking. Life is full of numbers and averages.
I live in what is considered a first-world, economically advanced country, the UK. Life expectancy (2025) is 78.6 years (4098 weeks/943.2 months) for men and 82.6 years (4307 weeks/991.2 months) for women.
As I am now just past the age of 65, I am in a race against time.
Ticktock.
Does it bother me? I would say, not at all.
I did not really think about my own age or mortality until a few years ago, after my mother died. She was eighty-one and died after a year-long battle against cancer. It was a fight that she was never going to win. She had been a lifelong smoker, and eventually, it caught up with her. I watched as the cancer did its thing, and she wasted away.
My father died in the same year, not that I knew at the time. The last time I saw him was back in 1977. I was writing about it, so I tried to find out what had happened to him.
I did.
The internet helped in my search. I found out that he had also died of cancer. Not the lung cancer that took my mother, but I remember that back in the 1960s and 70s, he was a drinker and smoker. I’ve no idea if he changed his lifestyle after he decided to find a new life for himself, but I doubt it.
So, both my parents died around the age of eighty — just around those UK averages for the time. In part, it was probably their lifestyle choices that contributed to their demise. Other than that, they may well have had good genetics and passed them on to me.
Unlike my parents, I have never smoked, and I rarely drink alcohol these days. Somehow, I manage to avoid smoking — I’ve never even tried it, and other than cider, I have never liked the taste of alcohol, so why drink it?
I stopped a long time ago.
I’ve read that the body goes through changes at around the age of 40 and then sixty, but I can say I have not noticed anything yet. My health and fitness have been good. Importantly, I do eat a healthy diet, a habit that I got into many years ago. It’s an anti-inflammatory diet, not that I knew that when I started, and I do have cheat days.
I also exercise a lot. Physically, I don’t feel much different than I did when I first started going to the gym in my mid-twenties. I do a different workout these days, but I haven’t seen any decline yet. I still make gains, although sports science tells me that should not be happening.
And I do lots of walking. We evolved to keep moving, and walking is probably one of the best exercises we can do to delay the inevitable of the ageing process.
For me, the next big date is 70. I have read that there are changes that happen to the body at that age as well. I will see when it arrives.
But for now, my mind is fine and active. I’m older, hopefully wiser, and I can still do things that I want to do, like writing. Writing has become like a legacy for me. It is something that I can leave, a record of storytelling.
And I think that I am a little wiser to the world now. I know that there are things outside my control, and that is important to understand. We are often told that we can do whatever we want in life, but no, we can’t. We can try, and maybe do.
As you get older, you realise that there are unknowns, like financial security, which can depend on the actions of others. Sometimes I wish it were not so, but hey, what can you do? I also know that a cost of living crisis will happen again and again. I’ve seen and experienced many of them. That inflation is always with us. That money talks. Some will do well, others will struggle. There will be good and bad times.
We don’t have control over these things.
It’s probably why, in my sixth decade on this planet, I’m still looking for opportunities in life. Standing still and slowing down is not an option.
Right now, if my genetics are good, I may have twenty more years; that’s 1043 weeks or 240 months. Maybe I will have another thirty years, 1564 weeks, or 360 months?
Do I really want thirty more years? I hate to think what the price of things we need just to live will be in twenty or thirty years time. Inflation is guaranteed by the system we have no control over.
Getting old should never just be about the quantity of life but also the quality of life. It is the quality of life in old age that is often forgotten. We are living longer, but are we living more healthily and having a fulfilling life? Is it a worthwhile old age?
Evidence suggests no.
As we age, we should still have a purpose and make it worthwhile.
So if this post unsettles you, let it. It is a reminder to us all that your remaining weeks are not a countdown but an invitation.
Whichever week you are currently on in life, control what you can and make it a good one.
This is a re-write of my original article on Medium, November 2024.
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