Life in weeks calendar
A life in weeks calendar shows your life as a grid: one row per year, one box per week. Enter your birth date and instantly see how many weeks you have lived and how many are left up to your planning age – as a poster you can save and print. Everything happens in your browser; your date is never uploaded.
Source: Wait But Why – Tim Urban: Your Life in Weeks (idea and presentation). Updated: .
How it is calculated
The life in weeks calendar turns a human life into a grid: 52 boxes per row (week by week), one row per year of life. At 90 years that is 4,680 boxes – fewer than most people expect.
How to read the poster
- Blue: weeks that are completely behind you.
- Orange: the current week.
- White with outline: weeks that are still open.
- Light orange (optional): weeks after your retirement age. They show how much life lies before and after working life.
How exact is the grid?
Each row starts exactly on your birthday, and each box is seven days long. Because a year has 52.18 weeks, the last box of every row is 8 or 9 days long – so every birthday sits exactly at the start of a row. The idea comes from Tim Urban’s article “Your Life in Weeks”.
What people use it for
For pausing and prioritising: how many weeks are left until retirement, and how many of those should not pass on autopilot? Many hang the poster on the wall and cross off weeks, others mark milestones. The planning age is freely chosen and explicitly not a forecast of your life expectancy – nobody can predict that number for one person. For population averages, official life tables from your national statistics office are the place to look.
Frequently asked questions
What is a life in weeks calendar?
A graphic that shows a life in weeks: one row per year, one box per week. Weeks lived are filled, the rest still open. It became known through Tim Urban’s “Your Life in Weeks”.
How many weeks are in a life?
Mathematically 52.18 weeks per year. For a planning age of 80 that is about 4,174 weeks, for 90 about 4,696. The grid simplifies to 52 boxes per year.
Can I print my life calendar?
Yes. “Save poster as PNG” creates a high-resolution image you can print on A4 or A3. The SVG can be enlarged as far as you like.
Is my birth date stored or uploaded?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser. Only on your own device the page remembers your entries so you can continue next time.
How do I choose the planning age?
Pick a value you like to plan with, for example 80 or 90. It is a planning horizon for the poster, not a statement about your actual life expectancy.
What does marking the retirement age do?
All boxes from that age on turn light orange, so you see at a glance how many weeks fall into working life and how many remain after it.
Sources and legal basis
As of: · Editorial policy
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