I made a 10 year calendar. I am 39 something and as I enter my 40s, the thought of “I will soon be 50” often bothers me. I believe there are others in similar situations with some variations such as “I will soon get married” “I will soon become a parent” “I will soon enter my 30s” “I will soon … “.
But when you take a long term view of life, you start seeing your situations differently. So to help myself with such situations, I created myself a 10 year calendar. Now if you look at this mathematically, things become interesting. What seems major right now, is just a tiny tiny moment over the long term horizon.
Now think about tough situations you faced or might face and relook at them from a long term horizon (I would say take a 10 year period).
So you had a bad client meeting ? – It is an eye blink
So you had a bad day today ? – The series has not even started
So you had a bad year end review ? – You still haven’t finished the first episode
| Duration | Total bubbles filled | If next 10 years of life were a 8-part series |
| 10 Years | 100% | 400mins |
| 5 Years | 50% | 200mins |
| 1 Year | 10% | 40mins (still watching 1st episode) |
| 1 month | 0.833% | 3.33 mins (probably all characters are not even introduced) |
| 1 week | 0.192% | 46 secs (guess the openings credits are still playing) |
| 1 day | 0.027% | 6 secs (guess the video is still buffering) |
| 1 hour | 0.001% | 0.27 secs (almost the duration of a human eye blink) |
I plan to put a large print of this calendar on my wall and keep coming back to it. The beauty is that, often we expand current bad times and compress future good times. Everything is urgent and crucial and was supposed to be done yesterday. I hope this calendar helps me reverse that thought process.
On life and time 