The Panic Calculator

I tried to plan the rest of my life in Excel. It got weird.

Image by Brian Rosta

It started with curiosity.
Then anxiety.
Then conditional formatting.

I wasn’t planning to spiral that morning. I really wasn’t. I was just looking up the average life expectancy for someone my age. That’s all. One innocent Google search. Something about “how long do men live if they gave up Red Vines and Catholic guilt by age 42.”

But if you’ve ever typed “life expectancy calculator” into a search bar, you know what happens next.

You get pulled into a vortex of digital actuarial judgment — where websites ask things like:

• Do you smoke?
• Do you drink?
• Do you eat vegetables that aren’t fried and dipped in ranch?
• Do you own a bike and actually use it?
• Do you sleep well, or do you fall asleep to a playlist of regrets like the rest of us?

It’s like a personality quiz, except the result is “Here’s how long until you die.”

And once you answer it all honestly — or “honestly-adjacent” — it spits out a number.
78.
Or 83.
Or, if you lie really well and check the “run marathons” box: 92.