Timespan is a concept I adapted from the more well-known 'healthspan'. I first learnt about health span through Dr Peter Attia as I was looking into the science of longevity.

Healthspan is the period of life spent in good health, free from the chronic diseases and disabilities of ageing, whilst lifespan is strictly the time you are alive. I believe placing emphasis on healthspan is as important as extending lifespan.

Whilst a longer life is something many would gladly take with their eyes closed, I would wager that their acceptance is conditional on an acceptable healthspan. An extra decade above ground could involve 'living' in an intensive care unit hooked up to a ventilator or suffering from a debilitating chronic disease. This is vastly different to a decade with the ability to continue doing what you love or enjoy. As Attia states: "Longer lifespan with no improvement in healthspan is a curse, not a blessing".

Healthspan is clearly a useful way to achieve a more holistic view of physical longevity. Why not take this idea of adding dimensions to lifespan beyond physical health?

Timespan is a subjective all-encompassing metric that measures the quality and length of one's time. Time is our most scarce and valuable non-replenishable resource. Instead of using healthspan and lifespan as proxies for physical health, timespan includes any variable that can impact the quality or length of an individuals time. Timespan encompasses both the observable and hidden factors that impact one's time. [1]

Utility

With this definition, timespan can function as a useful frame to assist with decision making, goalsetting, pathway and even daily prioritisation or routine.

Planning your future pathway in the modern age is hard. I've personally found it difficult to weigh-up a seemingly infinite number of possibilities and options.

How do you decide on a pathway as an individual when you're not sure what you really want? You can understand that what others tell you is important, and you can see what others value, but you may not be convinced that it's right for you. And even once you realise what you want, how do you know your moving in the right direction?

What to Want?

I have found it useful to adopt a top-down approach and work backwards from an all-encompassing final goal to maximise timespan. At a fundamental level most people want to increase the quality and length of their lives. You can start by breaking down the high-level salient factors that impact the quality and length of your time. [2]

This can enable you to understand what is actually important for you to live the life you desire. For me, this helped me filter those limitless possibilities by viewing them through the lens of their impacts on the determinants of my timespan.

What to Do?

These determinants of timespan can then also form high-level goal areas to focus on and practically work towards. [3]

You can understand if certain pathways or decisions are right for you, based on how that pathway or decision will impact your current determinants of timespan. If it doesn't have the potential to improve your overall timespan, then it may not be worth pursuing. At any given point in time you can focus on the activity or pathway/pursuit with the potential to elicit the greatest increase in your timespan.

However, the obvious problem here is that it's impossible to know for sure how something will impact you without actually experiencing it. Biasing toward action and incrementally building an understanding of how different things impact your timespan is the way to become better at predicting this over time. Being directionally accurate over many attempts beats waiting for some theoretical perfect pathway. Through trying things, you can gain a better understanding of yourself and your determinants of timespan. This can then enable you to make better decisions with an increased likelihood of increasing your timespan.

Mission

For me, furthering human timespan is also a big-picture mission to work towards in life. Enabling others to improve the quality and length of their time is something worth doing. A simple decision-making heuristic I use is: If it doesn't have the potential to increase either mine or someone else's timespan, it's not worth doing.

In my journey to optimise my own timespan, I will research and test a number of different ways to increase my timespan, based on my own determinants. I can then share what I learn along the way to help those with similar determinants improve their timespan. I will then build things that can help people increase their timespan.

To be clear, the concept of timespan isn't an exact science or a revolutionary idea. It is just another way to look at longevity. Forecasting the impact of things on your timespan is subject to inaccuracies. And expecting to just sit-down and know all the salient things that can impact the length and quality of your time is unrealistic. Not to mention the fact that our determinants of timespan are dynamic and will evolve over time.

But I've still gotten lots out of it, and hope you find it useful too.

Footnotes

[1] Observable factors include things like physical health and wealth. Hidden factors could include physical social connection, mental/spiritual health, fulfilment, joy and excitement.

[2] This is easier said than done. Interestingly knowing what makes you happier and more fulfilled can be quite difficult to pinpoint. I have an article in the works that details a workaround I've found for this.

[3] Determinants can be anything that impacts the length or quality of your time. However, to make it more useful, try to roll-up these factors into higher-level 'umbrella' categories that can group similar determinants.

E.g. Work, Health, Relationships and Joy could be your highest level categories. Each of these can be broken down into smaller salient determinants within. This could be mission, wealth and growth for 'Work'. Family, friends and partner for 'Relationships.