Original: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
This is a view of human life measured in years:
And this is human life measured in months:
But today, we’re looking at human life measured in weeks:
Each row of weeks makes up a year. This is the number of weeks it takes to turn a newborn into a 90‑year‑old.
It feels like our lives are made up of countless weeks. Yet they’re right there—completely countable—staring at you.
Before we go any further, let’s see how a typical American spends their weeks:
Source: see original article
There are also some other interesting ways to use this weeks chart:
Famous people’s deaths (by weeks)
Woods and Federer (by weeks)
Einstein and Newton (by weeks)
But what about your weeks?
You (by weeks)
Sometimes life feels incredibly short, other times it feels endlessly long. This chart helps emphasize that it is definitely finite. Those are your weeks; they are everything you have.
Given that fact, the only word that can describe your weeks is precious. There are trillions of weeks in eternity, and you hold just a tiny handful. With the theme of “precious” in mind, imagine each of your weeks as a tiny gem—a 2 mm, 0.05‑carat diamond. Here’s one:
0.05‑carat diamond
If you multiply the volume of a 0.05‑carat diamond by the number of weeks in 90 years (4,680 weeks), the total is less than a tablespoon.
A spoonful of diamonds
Looking at that spoonful of diamonds raises a very obvious question: “Are you making the most of your weeks?”
When I think about my own weeks and how I use them, I see two good ways to treat a diamond:
- Enjoy the diamond
- Build something that makes your future diamonds—or other people’s diamonds—more enjoyable
In other words, you have this little spoonful of diamonds; you really want to create a life that makes them bring you joy. If a diamond doesn’t make you happy, it’s probably because you’re using it to improve other diamonds—either your own future diamonds or someone else’s. Ideally, you balance #1 and #2 and often achieve both (like when you love your job).
Of course, if a diamond is enjoyable but enjoying it destroys your future diamonds (the specialty of the instant‑gratification monkey), that’s not good. Likewise, if you keep using one diamond after another to build something for the future, but it doesn’t make you happy and looks like an endless long‑term project, that’s also not good.
The worst way to use diamonds is to achieve neither #1 nor #2. Sometimes “neither” happens when you’re in the wrong career or wrong relationship, often a symptom of lacking courage, discipline, or creativity. Sometimes “neither” is due to a debilitating issue.
We’ve all experienced “neither” weeks, and they feel bad. When a string of “neither” weeks occurs, you become frustrated, angry, despairing, and many other unsettling adjectives. “Neither” weeks are inevitable; sometimes they’re important—usually a terribly bad “neither” week leads to a life‑changing insight—but minimizing your “neither” weeks is a worthwhile goal.
It can be summed up like this:
What your weeks contain
Life Calendar
One reason we fall into “neither” is that we don’t think deeply enough about things—so one of the most important skills is continuous reflection and self‑awareness. Otherwise you can end up in an unconscious rut, wasting a bunch of precious diamonds.
To help you (and us) stay awake and avoid “neither,” we created a Life Calendar that lists every week of your life on a single sheet of paper. We don’t usually introduce products in articles, but in this case they’re complementary.
The calendar is a high‑quality poster (24 in × 36 in) designed for writing and can last for decades. It costs $20 and can be purchased here:
Beyond encouraging regular reflection, we hope the calendar helps you feel more direction in life, set goals and stick to them, take pride in your achievements, and be grateful for the diamonds in your spoon.
How to use the calendar is completely open‑ended. Some possibilities include:
- Highlight past weeks in different colors, grouping them into “life chapters”—high school, college, first job, second job, new city, engagement, marriage, etc., or perhaps a brand‑new way of understanding life chapters. You can also mark special boxes where key turning points occurred.
- Write something in each week’s box—the boxes are big enough to fit a few words with a sharp pencil.
- Mark a future box and visually see how many weeks you have left to achieve a future goal.
- If you’re a new parent, make one for your child—it can be fun for them to look back and see what happened in the early years of their life.
- Or you may prefer to leave it completely blank.
Both the weeks chart and the Life Calendar remind me that these empty squares staring at me are mine. We often feel trapped in the life we’re living, but this blank‑square palette can be anything we want it to be. Everyone you know, everyone you admire, every hero in history—they all completed everything using the same blank squares.
These squares can also remind us that life is forgiving. No matter what happens each week, the next week you get a fresh blank square to work with. That makes me want to skip New Year’s Resolutions—they never work—and instead focus on making a new “Week’s Resolution” every Sunday night. Each blank square is an opportunity to dominate the coming week—a great reminder.
Calendar:
