I recently read the article Your Life In Weeks and experienced a shift in my perception of the time that I have left in my life. After reading the article I was inspired and immediately started creating graphics visualising my own life.
At almost 32 years old, some might say that I still have my whole life ahead of me, but the truth is that I’ve used up either a third, possibly a half or maybe even more, depending on how long I get to live.
In the visualisations, I’ve used square symbols ☐ to show the weeks, months and years that I still have ahead of me and square symbols with a cross in them ☒ showing the weeks, months and years that I have already used up.
My Lifetime Visualisation in Years
The following graphic shows how many more years I have – assuming I’m fortunate enough to live to 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and possibly even 90 or 100. At the end of each line, I’ve included how old I’ll be at that stage and what year it will be. So in 2025, I’ll be 40.
My Lifetime Visualisation in Months
The following graphic breaks this down even further and shows my lifetime in months. At the end of each line, I’ve included how old I’ll be at that stage and each line represents 3 years.
My Lifetime Visualisation in Weeks
And lastly, the following graphic breaks things down even further into weeks showing how many weeks I’ve used up and how many I might still have ahead of me. On the left of each line, I’ve included the year and each column represents a month. I’ve used the average of 4 weeks per month to keep it simple.
In Conclusion
Visualising a lifetime with blocks like this makes one thing very clear. The time we have on this planet is finite. As it stands, no human will live forever. Our time is limited and with every passing, day, week, month and year we get closer to the end.
This shift in perception has helped me get clear on how I want to spend my time and what I really want to do with the rest of my life. The sense of urgency is great for taking life by the horns and making every day count.I challenge you to create your own visualisations. I used a simple text editor app called TextWrangler for Mac, but you can use any simple word editing app to do the same.
The idea is, as far as I can tell, is to have as many memories, happy and sad, to fill the weeks, that when you get to the end you’re happy to leave with a smile on your face:)
Hi Bob, thanks for reading and commenting. Yes, I think you’re spot on. Departing this life with a smile and feeling fulfilled and content is the end goal. Also living each day feeling at peace and content is also worth pursuing.
Love the concept and definitely want to use something similar, but i noticed a slight mistype from year 48-52. So keep that in mind if you would like to work with these documents