I put together a timeline to help myself see the lifespans, dates of birth, death, etc. for those in the genealogy of Abraham. Genesis 1-11, I think, are particularly hard chapters to understand. My hope was that getting some numbers down and a visual representation would help. Maybe it will be helpful for someone else as well.  (Note that the dates can easily be off by several years; this basically assumes everyone was born on the first day of the first month of the year.)

An interesting note is that Methuselah seems to have died the year of the flood (from my reading it’s possible he died up to 3 years before the flood, but the most natural reading has him dying in the same year).   According to MacArthur his name indicated the coming flood:

Methuselah has a very interesting name. . . .  The Hebrew means, “man of the shoot,” or “man of the shot out,” or “man of the sending forth.”  . . .  The man identified with something that is sent out, something that is shot out.  So his name signifies that he will not die until judgment is shot out. . . .  Almost every commentary you read on that clearly indicates that Methuselah dies in the year of the flood.  He is the man who will live until the shooting out of the judgment of God.

A second interesting note is that, given the most plain reading of the text, it sounds like Shem was alive when Jacob was born (and Noah and Abraham’s lives overlapped nearly 60 years).