Will running games and programs off a flash drive lower life span?

I'm playing games like doom and hexen off of my flash drive, and also using rpgmaker and running it off of my flash drive. I'm running RPGmaker on my flash drive out of laziness, i just don't want to have to keep updating my flash drive every time i change something so I just run it directly off of it. So will doing this lower the life expectancy of my flash drive? If so is it significant?