The 100-Year-Old Plan
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
Dicks's decision rule for how to spend an hour comes from being robbed at gunpoint at 22, when the only emotion he felt facing what he believed was his death was regret. The rule externalises that moment: picture the hundred-year-old version of yourself on their deathbed, describe honestly how you are spending this block of time, and ask whether that person is grateful. It is not an argument against leisure — he defends a client's goal of watching the fifty greatest films with her husband, and his own Simpsons marathons with his son — because those are purposeful, defined and memorable. The test separates chosen consumption from default consumption: filling hours with things that are easy and forgettable rather than hard and memorable, on the path of least resistance.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Summon the hundred-year-old you
Put the deathbed version of yourself in the room as the judge. The question is never 'does this make me happy today' — Dicks concedes hot dogs, golf and The Simpsons would all pass that test — but whether the person at the end of the life endorses how the days were spent.
- 2
Describe the block of time out loud
State plainly what the hours actually are: three hours of television every evening after dinner, then bed, then repeat tomorrow. Naming the pattern rather than the single instance is what makes it assessable.
Pro tip Multiply it out — a nightly habit is hundreds of hours a year.
- 3
Ask: memorable or forgettable?
Apply the single filter. Dicks's claim is that we don't remember or value most of the television we watch. If you won't recall it at all, the hundred-year-old you won't be thanking you for it.
Watch out Don't confuse enjoyable-at-the-time with memorable. They are different tests.
- 4
Separate purposeful consumption from default consumption
Leisure with definition and meaning passes. Watching the fifty greatest films ever made beside your husband with a glass of wine, or every Marvel film with your wife and son across a pandemic, are dreams with structure. Sitting down at seven because it's seven is the path of least resistance.
Pro tip Turn passive leisure into a defined goal — a list, a series, a person to share it with — and it flips from forgettable to memorable.
- 5
Reallocate the hours that fail
Take the blocks the test flags as forgettable and point them at a dream — which can be as modest as a backyard vegetable garden, walking more, or seeing friends. Dicks's point is not to work more, but to stop leaking hours you don't value.
Watch out Don't strip out all rest at once; reduce the block rather than deleting it.
In the wild
A client told Dicks her horizon goal was to sit on her couch and watch the fifty greatest movies of all time from a published list, then apologised that it didn't feel very productive. He told her it sounded incredibly productive, because it was her dream. The job then became maximising her work time and chore time so she could get on the couch with her husband more often. He argues her hundred-year-old self will look back and be glad she saw the fifty greatest films ever made, spent that time with her husband, and talked about meaningful art.
→ A leisure goal passes the test because it has definition, a companion and a finish line — and productivity is redirected to serve it.
Dicks cites David Cassidy, the Partridge Family musician who became world famous and made music that made millions of people happy. Speaking to his daughter on his deathbed, the last thing he said in his life was 'so much wasted time'. Dicks uses it as the endpoint of the argument: even a globally successful creative career didn't inoculate him against the regret. The person most at risk isn't the one who achieved nothing, but the one who never asked the question until the last moment.
→ The cautionary case for running the test now rather than discovering the answer at the end.
Dicks watches every episode of every season of The Simpsons with his ten-year-old son. They crack up together, make jokes about it for days, and his son once heard Aerosmith on the radio and announced they were 'the Simpsons guys'. He classifies this as meaningful use of his time, and the family's pandemic run through every Marvel film the same way — something they will always remember as a joyous three months in quarantine.
→ Television with a shared companion and a defined arc passes the hundred-year-old test cleanly.
Common mistakes
Reading the test as anti-leisure
Dicks explicitly supports the woman watching fifty films with her husband and watches cartoons with his son. What fails is not rest but autopilot — hours filled because the clock said so, which you will not remember.
Waiting for a crisis to run it
Dicks got the insight from a gun to his head and paid for it with fifteen years of PTSD. His stated goal is that people learn the lesson without the experience — the test only works if you apply it deliberately, in advance.
Judging by today's happiness
Golf, hot dogs and TV would all make Dicks happy on any given day. Using daily enjoyment as the criterion is exactly the failure mode the hundred-year-old perspective is designed to correct.
From the transcript
“when you're a hundred will you be happy having lived this life the way you're living it now”
“they're just watching for watching's sake”
“the last thing he said to his daughter and in his life was so much wasted time”
From the episode
Someday Is Today: Achieve Your Goals And Live Without Regret - Matthew Dicks
Matthew Dicks