An Essay on Lifetime Views

Published: June 9th, 2017. 
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This essay will outline a secondary currency I’ve created. It’s allowed me to better use my time by tricking my brain into justifying what I want to do anyway. It’s called Lifetime Views.
 
Life is about allocating resources. I use Lifetime Views as a secondary currency, along with money, to figure out how to best allocate my resources. This impacts business decisions, investments, and hobbies I want to learn.
 
The goal is to present the history of how I created lifetime views, how it’s impacted my life, some brief lessons learned, and to start to collecting stories of how it’s impacted others’ lives.
 
In the past two years, I’ve shared the Lifetime Views philosophy with friends, family members, strangers,  and business colleagues. It’s brought people to tears, changed their actions, and frequently over the past 2 years, my friends have encouraged me to write it down and share it.
 
A Quick Assignment
 
I want you to imagine your three closest relationships; family, friends, whoever you choose.
 
For each person, think about the number of times you’ve seen each person in a year for the past 3 years.
 
Remember those numbers.
 
Backstory of Lifetime Views
 
Thanksgiving Day in 2014 was a Thursday. On the following Sunday, I was driving home to Boston from my sister’s house in the Bronx. I was on I-95 North crossing into Connecticut and I thought to myself, “It’s really awesome that my sister I hang out so much.”
 
I don’t have a great relationship with my parents, but my sister and I have maintained our relationship and it’s been getting better and better every year.
 
Even though we live four hours apart we see each other four times per year. At the time, four times per year seemed like a lot. I have many close friends that I don’t see even once per year on average.
 
At the same moment, it occurred to me that my sister was thirty-three so I thought she’d likely live about fifty more years. Again, fifty years seems like a long time.
 
The math then hit me. Four times per year, over fifty more years, that’s only two hundred.
 
My sister and I will see each other only two hundred more times before we die.
 
The number seemed incredibly small. Only two hundred more times.
 
That was when Lifetime Views was born.
 
The combination of four times per year felt like a lot, and fifty more years seems like a long time, but all of this added up to only two hundred more times we would hang out before we died, which felt very small.
 
After I had calculated the number of Lifetime Views with my sister, I quickly started calculating this for other important people in my life.

• Parents. I grew up in Maine and didn’t have a great relationship with my parents. They moved to North Carolina when I was 18. I’ve seen them 3 times since then, or once every 4 years. They are both around 60, so if I continue to see them once every 4 years, and they live for 20 more years, I’ll see them 5 more times.
• Tyler is one of my best friends and is a farmer in Maine. I see him 2 to 3 times per year.
• Jesse is my best friend from college. He lives in Upstate NY. Since we graduated from college, we’ve seen each other once every 2 years. Assuming we live for 50 more years, we’ll see each other 25 more times before we die.
• Ethan, a good friend who recently moved back to Boston. We live together, so naturally we see each a lot. Currently, I see him 5 days per week. That’s 260 Lifetime Views per year at the moment. If we live together for 2+ years, that’s at least 500 more Lifetime Views.

 
Now, remember the three people I asked you about the top of essay?
 
Calculate their Lifetime Views.
 
Think about that for a second. If your current actions don’t change, that’s the number of times you’ll see that person before you die.
 
Now that we’ve defined the term, here’s why I think Lifetime Views has had a large impact on my life.

1. Language allows us to see things more clearly. Having a word for something can make you notice it when you otherwise might not have.
2. Humans like things that they can count. We use money because it’s easy to count. It’s useful to a point, but after that not so much.
3. Thus, a metric of value that is easy to understand and count could be useful

 
 
Lifetime Views and Lessons Learned on the Impact of Decisions

• Investments. When I look at investments now I look for investment that provide both good cash on cash returns both also Lifetime View dividends. For example, I’d prefer to invest $30k in a forest compound that could generate $5k to $6k in post tax free cash flow and provides a place where I can invite friends and family to make it easier to spend time together, rather than simply invest $30k in the public equity market.
• Housing: Housing decisions have a large impact on the Lifetime Views you can acquire. Given the Lifetime Views with my closest relationships are currently no more than 200, I’d see anyone that I live with more than 200 times in a single year. Because you naturally get the most Lifetime Views with people you live near, this means hosing is a very important decision.
• Business partners: Business partners are similar to housing decisions; they have a large impact on who you get the most Lifetime Views with that tends to have disproportionate impact. When thinking about business partners, I’ve found you need to heavily consider that you will be getting thousands of Lifetime Views with them.
• Activities: Activities that once seemed pointless can now be seen as more valuable. I illegally raised chickens in a garage in Somerville. While I didn’t make a huge cash profit on the chickens, it actually provide a nice Lifetime View dividend. It was so unique that my friends wanted to come over and check it out. I saw many more people that I likely would have seen that year because of the chickens. The increase in Lifetime Views drastically increased the value of raising chickens.
• It provides an easy metric to make you do actions you’d want to do anyway. Last year I was driving to a friend’s wedding. It was a 6 hour drive and I was thinking about taking a pit stop to see a friend. It would be a 2 to 3 hour detour. I didn’t want to do it because it would increase the trip length by 50%, so it seemed like a large hassle, compared to the length of the trip. However, when you compare it to getting a Lifetime View for only 2 to 3 hours, it seems like free money.

 
 
Observations on Lifetime Views
 
Here’s a few observations and thoughts on common questions I get about Lifetime Views.

• Conservative and simple on purpose. Many people will ask me “what counts?” Is a one week vacation the same as a coffee with someone? While I understand that technically, these are different, I consider them to be the same. Any unique instance of spending time with someone would be considered a Lifetime View. The reason for this has to keeping it simple. The benefit of a currency is that it’s simple to understand and count. As soon as you get many types or qualities of currency, it’s become more complex and thus harder to use.
• Assumes a straight line. The calculation of Lifetime Views assumes that the past few years of acquiring Lifetime Views continue to the future. Obviously, one could start generating more Lifetime Views or it could decrease. I use straight line to keep it simple.
• Easy to change. While I’ve noticed that Lifetime Views can have a depressing impact on people, I’ve noticed it’s also empowering. It’s very easy to change your Lifetime Views with the people that you want to, simply by prioritizing. I’ve sent many friends a text message that says “Hey man, in the last 4 years we’ve only seen each other 2, at this rate, if we lie 50 more years we’ll see each other only 25 more times. I’d like to change that. Want to hang out?” Every time I’ve sent this out, the reply has always been  something like, “holy sh%t, that’s crazy. Yes, let’s hang out.”
• Value of a Lifetime View? It’s unclear, but certainly is very worthwhile because in most cases, we don’t have many of them left.

 
Want to share your story?
My goal with Lifetime Views is to spread the new currency. Often time I’ve noticed that language  and new terms allows us to more easily see something that was always there. This is my goal with Lifetime Views. By having a term, we can see it more easily, and by making it countable, it will more easily be able to collect them.  

• What was your first reaction when you learned about Lifetime Views?
• Did it change how you see the world? Do you look at situations differently?
• Has it changed your actions in any way? If yes, please let me know?

 
If you’re interested in sharing your story, feel free to email me at [email protected]