This Unique Way of Viewing Your Life Will Encourage You to Spend Your Time wisely
What are you doing with the weeks you have left to live?
The popular blog Wait But Why wrote an article called Your Life in Weeks which shows a unique perspective on what life looks like. This grid format is a concise way of visualizing how much life you’ve completed and how much you have left. It really puts your limited time on this planet into perspective.
As seen in the image above, each box is one week and each row is a year. This particular generator also colour-codes the weeks to match common phases in your life. See the legend below for what each colour and symbol means.
The grid of weeks in this article is specific to my life. There are two important things I noticed from my grid.
I didn’t realize how close I was to becoming another year older. When I first generated this grid, I thought there was a mistake because this year just started. However, each year (i.e. each row in the grid) starts on my birthday, not the first of the month.
I only have 5 weeks left before I turn 22.
I’ll never be 21 ever again.
Instead of having my birthday crept up on me, it’s nice to see how much time I have left. It’s a reminder that the last month of my life as a 21-year-old is coming up quickly and I should live accordingly.
The next thing I noticed was just how close I am to entering this massive red block called a career.
It looks terrifying long and the monotonous colour is intimidating.
While the beginning of life is full of frequent milestones, the latter half is just two big blocks of working until you retire. However, there are still many milestones within this massive red block that aren’t shown. Everyone’s career is vastly different. It would be impossible to generalize it all.
The fact that I’m almost about to exit the yellow block makes me want to appreciate it more. While I always knew that college is only a brief period in my life, seeing just how close it is to being over makes me sad.
Some ways to spend your boxes
Each box is a fresh start with many possibilities. While there’s no single optimal way to live your life, ideally it’s a combination of the following.
- Doing activities that you enjoy.
- Doing activities that will improve your enjoyment in the future.
- Doing activities that will increase the number of boxes you have left.
Remember, the little star only ever moves forward. Once you enter a new row or colour block, you can never go back. Knowing this, spend your time wisely to fill your boxes with whatever is most meaningful to you.
