Tim Urban, the author of the popular blog, Wait But Why, has a great TED talk called Inside the mind of a master procrastinator. He tells the story of his lifelong struggle with procrastination and even how his bad habits manifested themselves when preparing for his TED talk. In one of the heavier moments of the talk, he introduces a grid of small squares that each represent one week. In total, they add up to 90 years of life.
In a previous blog post of his, Tim quantifies a human life in weeks, months, and years. Here’s what that looks like:
When I talk to people about these ideas, it usually goes one of two ways. Either they reflect on what it means to make the most of those finite squares, or they would absolutely rather change the topic. It’s too morbid. Why think about those things? It’s depressing! We don’t have much time on Earth. Rather than turn away from that fact, it might be more fruitful to face it head on, just like Tim Urban is arguing for in his talk and writing.
To make sure the message stuck, I wanted a way to remind myself to spend my time more wisely every day. Since I spend so much time at my computer screen for work, I decided to build a simple browser extension that shows my life’s grid every time I open a new tab.
I hope that sharing this encourages more people to live their days, weeks, and years with more purpose. The code for the extension is open sourced on Github . Any contributions are welcome!