Background
A weird thing happened at the weekend. I saw Gina Trapani’s “my life in weeks”, and then no more than an hour later, I was listening to Sam Harris talk and he mentioned the infamous Your life in weeks post on “wait but why”, which is what Gina’s version credits too.
Given Gina was so kind to publish her work under an MIT license, I decided that I had to make my own version.
You can see the result of my efforts at https://ben-howes.co.uk/life-in-weeks/.
It feels like a deeply personal thing which I can’t imagine anyone else caring about, but it was something I wanted to do myself. Enjoy.
Why it’s interesting
Seeing a list of 4000 little boxes on a screen - and actually what looks now like the very short distance between certain events is a powerful visualisation of how our lives fit into our larger picture. And bloody terrifying.
And “terrifying” as it is, that’s part of the power of it. The perspective of how short our lives are shows just how much every week matters.
So, whilst Shia’s “just do it” from May 2015 didn’t quite make the cut for inclusion on my chart.. Don’t let your dreams be dreams.
Your life in weeks
Should you feel interested, you can:
- If you’re comfortable with code, you can clone my version, or Gina’s original version.
- If not, there’s an online tool where you can make your own
