And it's thrown me into a thought experiment about longevity.
I've been in a conundrum the whole day: what do I do with the credits? How do I use them? How do I not let them go to waste?
Should I just live a normal day, spend a few hours on normal programming tasks? Or point Claude at some ridiculoudly inefficient task to burn through them? Or try to convert them to cash somehow?
I asked a few friends and got ideas like:
"Find Upwork tasks marked as "URGENT" and point Claude Code at them. Make a few hundred bucks"
"Have Claude do deep research on 1,000 AI companies and pick stocks"
I also asked Claude Code, which gave a (great) recommendation to refactor codebases and audit them for security.
Some friends even asked me to give them an API key, so they can spend the credits. I said "ok".
But honestly, I'm realizing the only thing I want right now is to extend my credits -- have them last longer. Or spend all of today figuring out how to get more credits.
Where am I going with all this? Upon reflecting I realized my imminent credit expiry is simulating how I would think about the question "what would you do if this was your last day on Earth?".
People will give all kinds of answers on how to "max out the day" -- to burn through your last day's 'life credits'. Smoke a pack of cigarettes, party the entire night, call all your friends. But really all I want is to extend the credits, even if for one more day.
I don't even care about the dilemma of "live your last day normally" vs "go all out". I just want another day.
When people would ask Bryan Johnson if he really wants to live forever, he'd run through a similar thought experiment: when you're on your deathbed, the only thing you want is to live till tomorrow. So it's not about living forever, rather about living till tomorrow. Now apply that argument recursively and it's clear why people are spending $millions to "live forever".
Scarcity of "credit expiration" is making me more conscious about work. I'm probably going to go on a hacking bender all day just to make good use of my last day of credits. Isn't this what the Stoics say about living life? Live your life as if you're going to die tomorrow, because that mindset shift creates a kind of scarcity that makes you live a 'better today'.
This is just a random thought I couldn't shake out as I debated how to use the credits. I imagine that yes, I will use Claude Code a bit more excessively today. But only about 2-3x more. Really what I plan on doing is figuring out alternatives so I'm not suddenly "intelligence poor" tomorrow. That might mean paying for a Claude Max plan, or trying OpenCode, or switching back to Cursor. But abstractly, all I'm really doing is trying to last longer. People on their deathbeds really just want to live till tomorrow.
Written by Aryan Bhasin