A Life Calendar
A visual template to help you feel more centered, plan better, and celebrate your accomplishments.
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” - Dr. Seuss
If you’d like to feel more centered in your life, set goals, and remind yourself to celebrate your accomplishments, I recommend getting Tim Urban’s Life Calendar. It’s a poster representing the ninety year timeline of a human lifespan — using 90 rows (for each year), 52 columns (for each week of the year) and 4,680 empty boxes. It has helped me reflect, prioritize, and plan my life, while making many of my daily worries appear insignificant in comparison.
In my previous post about “Planning more experiences” I detailed the weekly planning method and template I use to create and savor memorable experiences with my family over the course of a year (you can find the template here).
My Life Calendar serves as an additional tool for reflecting and gaining perspective over a multi-year timespan. Adorning the wall near the entrance to my home office, these boxes serve as a persistent reminder of the finite time I have and the path that has brought me to this moment.
One way I use the Life Calendar is by incorporating it into a five minute reflection — I gently trace my fingers over boxes that I’ve filled out with past memories and future events — for example: joyous weeks marked by the birth of my children; somber weeks marking the loss of my father and mother-in-law; future weeks marking my children departing for college; and distant weeks, where I envision celebrating my golden wedding anniversary and my children’s fiftieth birthdays, as I approach the end of my rows.
I hope the Life Calendar helps you celebrate your accomplishments, reduce stress by giving you perspective, and serves as a reminder of the events that brought you to this instant in time. And let us enjoy this moment, because none of our boxes are guaranteed.
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P.S: Please take a few minutes to read Tim Urban’s blog post “Your Life In Weeks” where he beautifully articulates why he created the Life Calendar and how he thinks about a life well spent.