👋 Hi, I’m Gina. This is a map of my life, where each week I’ve been alive is a little box. Tap a box to see what I was doing where that week.
📍 Read more about Life in Weeks at Wait But Why. I adapted the code that generated this page from Buster Benson.
🌱 This life and this map are a work in progress. I’ll update it as I go.
🍯 “I always get to where I am going by walking away from where I have been.” – Winnie the Pooh
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32 Comments
therein
Powerful in how it puts it all into perspective is all I could say.
RobCodeSlayer
I’ve been using MarkWhen for a similar life timeline https://markwhen.com
hettygreen
This was epic, thanks for sharing!
rednafi
This is a terrifying reminder of the shortness of our lives. I remember reading a blog by Tim Urban, where he showed that you could put all the weeks in your life on a single piece of A4 paper, and it didn’t feel nice.
sorcercode
Terrifyingly inspiring.
karolineleavitt
[dead]
asterix_pano
Thanks for sharing, this format really puts things into perspective.
memhole
This is fascinating. Idk if it was a good or bad thing. In college I once looked up some insurance chart of life expectancy probabilities. It puts things in perspective that’s for sure.
elashri
That was nice to watch. I spent about 25 minutes going through that.
But it was horrifying for me. I realized that I wanted to see if the source code is available but then realized that I really don't remember those details. I remember random things for my childhood but I don't remember the date when I started elementary school. I know that I got my first computer when I was in third grade but don't remember the date. I don't even remember the date I started college and I probably wrote the wrong date couple of times during grad school application. While I started recording something less than a diary to record some of these but this was around covid.
Thanks OP and HN for this reality check.
delichon
From this view it's clear how wasteful ontogeny is. All of that physical and psychological development takes too much valuable time and investment. And we haven't even gotten to Gina's retirement years yet. Clearly the future is in using 3D bioprinting to build fully formed adults as if sprung from the brow of Zeus. Skill and memory transfer are a technical problem only as long as we cling to our bias against our artificially intelligent upgrades. Aging is defeated by implanting our old model weights into a new print. So much efficiency is waiting if we dare to free ourselves from convention.
bloomingkales
Woah, look at how sparse our perception of reality is. We really can’t remember a full continuous memory, we constantly make things up to fill in the gaps.
One take away here is to constantly and proactively fill up every single second with a positive memory.
jasperry
Doing this kind of thing is so helpful to get perspective on our life. One part is just writing down all the events we can remember. Then we can add to that some kind of schematic based on longer periods of time, both for understanding the phases of life we've already been through and for having an overarching plan for what's (possibly) left. Decades are one way to do it, but I thought it was fun to use custom timespans to map to my own milestones. Once I made my "life calendar", I've tracked it for longer than I did with any prior planning attempts.
HL33tibCe7
Into my heart, an air that kills, from yon far country blows. What are those blue remembered hills? What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content. I see it shining plain. Those happy highways, where I went, and cannot go again.
Animats
"I never look back, dear. It detracts from the now." – Edna Mode.
picafrost
So much of our life is consumed by work. Seeing your lifespan laid bare like this, there's a perverse instinct to optimize what remains. Have to be more productive, more efficient. But it's a bit like seeing you're bleeding out and deciding to optimize your blood donation schedule, isn't it?
turtleyacht
In the preface of The Games of a Lifetime by Julian "Jaz" Rignall, life may be experiencing one art piece after another:
—
The passage of my life is simply a gallery wall upon which I hang some of the most extraordinary, groundbreaking, exciting and downright thrilling pieces of video game art of the past half century. And yes, as far as I'm concerned, video games are most certainly art.
russellbeattie
It's interesting that she lists presidential inaugurations. I personally use those as milestones because my birthday is January 20th. It's fun to watch video of past inaugurations (since 1972) and think, "Huh, I was such and such age then. I don't remember everyone looking so weird!"
(The bad side, of course, is that I can have some truly depressing birthdays – like my 45th and 53rd.)
nindalf
I immediately recognised the author’s name from Lifehacker in the early 2000s. Enjoyed countless hours reading that.
hnthrowaway0315
This is an interesting way of reflecting on one's life.
I have calculated my ROL (Rest.Of.Life i.e. before been garbage collected) productive hours (hours dedicated to side projects) in a similar way, and the result panics me.
Assume that I still have 37 years before been garbage collected, and 35 years before cognitive degeneration:
Starting from today:
[Time-frame 1]:
I have 200 days before kid goes to primary school. That's roughly 56 days of weekends and 144 days of workdays. For each weekend day, I'd assume an average of 2.5 hours of productivity towards my side projects (I do have more but some are dedicated to gaming and light reading). For each workday, I'd assume an average of 1 hour (usually it is a burst of 2-3 hours for 2-3 days followed by 0 hours for 3-4 days). So this gives me 562.5 + 1441 = 284 hours.
I think this is a generous estimation because I'm struggling with minor depression from time to time, and TBH I hate my work, so I lose a day if either flares up.
[Time-frame 2]:
Kid is going to spend roughly 6 years in primary school. He is going to get friends and gradually gives me more time if he chooses so. However, I'll probably spend more time checking his assignments, talking to him, and introducing him to some hobbies in hope he can find his passion as early as possible. I read "iWoz" and would like to influence my kid as his father influenced him. The upside is — I can work on my hobby while educating him by just doing it. Downside of primary years is that he is going to weekend classes and clubs so those will take away my time too.
I'd give myself the same 2 hours every weekend day, and 1.5 hours every working day. Let's take 250 working days and 115 non-working days (weekends + holidays). This gives 2501.5 + 1152 = 605 hours each year, and 3,630 hours for 6 years.
[Time-frame 3]:
Kid is going to spend 5 years in secondary school. Judging from my own experience, he is going to gradually leave his parents alone, rebel against them, and stay much more time with their friends. I don't really know about my employment at the time, but let's assume I'm still working a corporation cog.
I'd give myself 3.5 hours every weekend day, and the same 1.5 hours every working day. This gives 2501.5 + 1153.5 = 777.5 hours per year, and 3880 (rounded down) hours for 5 years.
[Time-frame 4]:
Kid is either going to a college or a technical school. Either way, we will probably rent him a condo close to where he studies. I'll also probably go into consulting if possible, or at least take some long breaks during this time frame. If I want to learn General Relativity, this is probably the last chance. I don't think I'm as lucky as those who still possesses a sharp mind in their 70s, so 10 years between 50s and 60s is my best shot.
I'd give myself 5 hours every weekend day, and maybe 2.5 hours every working day. This gives 2502.5 + 1155 = 1,300 hours per year. But I'd be in my mid-50s so this is probably an overestimate. I'll round it down aggressively to 1,000 hours. I can keep the same schedule for 5 years, so 5,000 hours for 5 years.
[Time-frame 5]:
I'm not sure what my cognitive ability looks like in my 60s. I'll have a lot of time, like, 10 hours every day because I don't want to work after 60. So that gives me 3,650 hours per year, and 36,500 until I'm 70, at which point I believe I wouldn't be able to pursuit serious academic or technical objectives. I know, I know, many people can still do it, but I don't think I can do it. I doubt I can work on side projects more than 5 hours per day, so I need to cut down that number at least half, to 18,000 hours. Probably more TBH.
[Time-frame 6]:
70 till garbage collected. It's going to be mostly volunteering work or looking after grandchildren or travelling with my wife, so 0 hour.
[Conclusion]:
Overall, if my mental health and physical health is good enough, my calculation is that I can put 30,000 hours into my side projects. That is, I have to be very lucky to get this number. No mental issues, no heart issues, kid doesn't cause any issues, wife is healthy, etc. In reality, probably a half or two thirds are more realistic.
Isn't that scary? There is so much to learn, yet so little time.
pedalpete
What strikes me is the empty spaces where we don't recognize what we did, or didn't do anything memorable.
I made an app to try to address this about a decade ago which I called Bucket52, the idea being that every week you put one memorable thing in it. Trying to do this just for a year was surprisingly difficult.
nrvn
I like weeks. Just 52 every year. Leap year agnostic.
I have a notebook for self reflection. Week-based. Since it is not a diary I call it septimary. Unlike a diary, the septimary gives me flexibility and every week I summarize something without mentioning specific dates or days unless this level of detail is really required by the context or significance of what needs to be written down.
Week 7 of year 2025 comes to an end.
dunyakirkali
Beautiful!
cryptozeus
This is good ! I have the exact same thing in google sheet, started tracking it after reading wait but why.
kingkongjaffa
I believe buster benson did it first
https://busterbenson.com/life-in-weeks
Vaslo
“Cheetoh inaugurated”
Yikes
morsecodist
Weeks is the most terrifying unit of time to think in. Short enough so you have a good sense of how long it feels but long enough to add up quickly.
rishikeshs
Here’s another version of mine: https://rishikeshs.com/timeline/
pronik
Gina Trapani! That's a name I haven't heard in a long time and at first couldn't place correctly — for some reason, my mind went to Groklaw, but Lifehacker was the correct answer. Maybe I'm idolizing my own youth and its associated available free time just a tiny bit and I can't actually believe it's been 20 years, but those felt like good times, Web 2.0 with its focus on communication instead of publishing, with Slashdot up top for tech news, Lifehacker, Engadget and many other sites not yet owned by big corporations feeling fresh and bearing individual flair, making you feel being a part of something. A rare feeling in modern times.
unixhero
Nope! I get massively depression triggered by stuff like this.
Just my own point of view, not meant as criticism.
IceDane
You made a cool thing!
Also, I'd be curious to read about your experience at NTT DATA. I'm biased, but inclined to believe that it might be because you discovered what true corporate horror looks like. Am I wrong?
rpastuszak
I did something similar (also inspired by Buster Benson): https://days.sonnet.io
Aaand, here's another one I like: https://days.rory.codes
zoogeny
I once did the math to figure out, how much space would be required to track my entire life.
I thought, I would want to know a couple of things: my location and my activity for every second of my life. Since I generally live relative to the surface of the Earth, my location could be stored in a GPS coord. And since the number of activities I engage in are not that big, I could probably store them as indexes into a map and a 32 bit int would probably give me a sufficient number of unique activities. I doubt I would exhaust that index space no matter how many unique activities I engaged in.
The math is pretty simple from there. Number of seconds in your expected lifetime multiplied by the size of data you want to store per second. Also consider how much of that is compressible (like an ideal 8 hours per day of sleep). Pretty sobering when I think about it.