Game of Life

How much of your life is actually yours?

Your week

I’m a -year-old in .

I sleep about a night.

I work or study a day, a week, and commute there and back.

I’d like to stop working at .

0 hours

are yours: about full years, of the time you have left.

Years ahead
Sleep
Work
Commuting
Upkeep
Yours

Your life in weeks

Same age in : .

Spend your hours

    Fine-tune my day

    Obligations come out of your free time. Anything you’d gladly do anyway belongs in “Mine.”

    Obligations

      Mine

        I get off work a year, counting vacation and public holidays.

        People who matter

        A parent, a friend, a child. How many years you likely share, and how many visits that holds at your pace. Everyone here uses your country’s life table.

        Compare two lives

        Paste someone’s Game of Life link, or describe them. Their weeks appear next to yours in the Ahead view.

        is a -year-old in . They sleep , work a day, a week, commute , and stop working at .

        Your life budget, as an image

        How it works

        Years ahead

        We use remaining life expectancy, written e(x): the average number of years still ahead for people who have already reached your age in your country. It comes from the United Nations World Population Prospects 2024 life tables for 2026, medium variant, by single year of age. Subtracting your age from life expectancy at birth undercounts, because having reached your age already improves the odds.

        An average hides a wide spread, so the page leads with the age half of people your age live past, and gives your free hours as a range for the middle half of people like you: the hours you would have if you lived as long as the lower and the upper quartile. By default today’s death rates are held fixed. The “keep falling” option follows the UN’s projected rates year by year instead, which usually adds a few years.

        Healthy years are rough: they apply the WHO 2021 ratio of healthy life expectancy to life expectancy, at birth and at 60, to your remaining years.

        Time that is yours

        Waking hours, minus work and commuting until the age you stop working, minus daily upkeep for the rest of your life. A work year is 52 weeks minus your time off. You decide which parts of your day count as obligations.

        People

        Shared years are the expected time you are both alive, treating your chances as independent, from each person’s own life table.

        Comparisons run the same model for the other person, with their own country, age and week.

        Conversions

        • Reading: adults read English silently at about 238 words a minute for nonfiction and 260 for fiction (Brysbaert, 2019, a meta-analysis of 190 studies). A typical novel runs about 80,000 words.
        • Languages: about 500 to 600 guided learning hours from beginner to B2 (Cambridge English). A time equivalence, not a promise.
        • Trips count 8 free hours a day. Movies are 2 hours, TV seasons 8.
        • Conversions in a row are alternatives. An hour can only be spent once.

        Privacy and data

        Everything runs in your browser. Your answers live in this page’s address and on this device, so a copied link carries them with it.

        Life tables: UN DESA, World Population Prospects 2024 (CC BY 3.0 IGO). Healthy life expectancy: WHO Global Health Observatory, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO).

        Your numbers