> “Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
- William Martin
The idea that one needs to do something memorable every week sounds like a recipe for disaster, burnout at a young age or depression. So no thank you, I'll take my ordinary life which is full of ups and downs.
Sidenote: The fact that a sign up is needed to download a PDF makes me think that you're using this as a way to farm for user data and makes me distrust your intention.
I'd like to add another detail, which is that people generally accept the idea that "deathbed perspective" is a highly privileged perspective, but with no real justification for this position. Here's a good article that questions this idea: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-the-deathbed-perspective-consi...
I always thought it was kind of silly to live your life so that for 1 day at the end of 80 years, you have some pleasant thoughts (assuming you are know you will die and aren't absolutely in miserable pain anyway).
I get that it's more a heuristic for living a good life. But life is so uncertain and your goals subject to change significantly every 5-10 years.
You don't need to wait till you're at your deathbed. You can do this assessment every 5-10 years. When you're past 40, you've lived quite a bit. You can look back and see what was worth it and what wasn't.
For me, stuff I regretted wasting time on while younger (e.g. too many video games) bring back much better memories than doing things I (mistakenly) thought had more value. Quitting gaming in my early 20's was, in retrospect, not a great idea.
But yeah, I agree with you somewhat. A lot of people who live to a fairly old age actually have said that if you live long enough, you'll realize that "nothing matters". So probably not best to put too much weight on their perspective.
I saw a tree yesterday. It was beautiful. The sun was close to setting, the sky was completely clear. The color of the sky went from a beautiful clear blue down to a very pale almost green color at the horizon, backdropping the tree. I may remember this the rest of my life.
That’s not true. That’s a very human-centric way to view things. If no humans exist things would still happen. If there was no life anywhere things would still happen.
I think this response comes from an inter-misunderstanding. In this context, "none of these things" referred to "none of this perceptions". Things like "color" and "beauty" only exists through the prism of entities which somehow feel them.
Only through solipsism one might think that nothing would exist without the current conscientiousness stream.
> The idea that one needs to do something memorable
I agree, which is why I try to view the little things as memorable. Laying on the couch with my dog or cooking for my wife is a little thing, but amazing and memorable. Doom scrolling, not so much.
I’ve recently incorporated exactly this into my journaling routine and find it a delight to look back on. At the end of the day I’ll be sure to write down one or two perfectly run-of-the-mill, but joyful things that happened to me, or that I noticed that day.
For example meeting a particularly friendly dog on the metro, a peculiar piece of graffiti, or just something a friend said that I found particularly funny.
It’s these small little moments that when stitched together over time that make up a “life well lived” in my opinion, much more so than setting large lofty goals or striving for doing “memorable” things.
So, I have a family. When I do something memorable in a weekend which involves social action (such as going to the zoo with the family, or a birthday party), I need to recover from it. I can't do something similar next weekend, I need to relax the weekend after. Maybe its the fact I am autistic.
I don't fancy the life calendar stuff. I am very curious by nature, and curiosity I find the most important in 'doing'. I really don't need to stimulate that, just like I don't need psychedelics or weed to get open minded (been there, done it).
I'm the same. I've attributed it to being a natural introvert. Extroverts seem to gain energy through social interactions, and can do one social event after another. Introverts seem to expend energy, and need a recharge between.
Mindfulness (what you’re basically describing) does not conflict with memento mori. When you realize that this tomato could be the last tomato you’ll be eating, having the conversation with your kid be the last conversation you’ll be having etc etc you’ll fully appreciate each moment in life as if it could be your last.
I think a death-centric way of thinking about life is unhealthy.
The fact of death isn't what makes things valuable or meaningful.
The fact that our time span to enjoy things is limited also isn't what makes them valuable or meaningful.
The quote is describing much more than mindfulness. It's saying that values and meaning are right in front of us. To reduce that to mindfulness misses the value in what it's saying.
Mindfulness is a product of an industry seeking to capitalise on the yoga pants (and later suits) demographic, to great success. Let's not legitimise it by using it as an example of healthy thinking, because it's not.
Mindfulness is an English translation of the Buddhist word “sati” which Buddhists use to describe one particular quality of meditation. To dismiss it because some people have coopted it would be like, well, to dismiss the yoga tradition because of “yoga pants”.
Just because something valuable can also be exploited by greedy capitalists does not stop it from being valuable.
There are some legitimate reasons to be wary of the push for mindfulness -- for example, when it is pushed by employers to try and increase employee satisfaction and retention, in lieu of actually improving their quality of life -- but that certainly doesn't mean the practice itself is bad.
There is some overlap. There is the Buddhist practice of Maraṇasati (mindfulness of death, death awareness), which is very similar to the Stoic practice of remembering that death or loss can strike at any time. Similarly, Vipassana, or Insight Meditation, which is one of the forerunners to the westernized mindfulness meditation, includes a focus on impermanence.
Seems tech people love them some memorizing. Live a memorable moment, load it into an Anki deck, then review memorable moments for the remainder of your days. Do one last review right before you check out.
Memento mori doesn't mean every moment needs to be absolutely epic. But a mindful approach can alleviate daily stresses, concerns, fights etc. You're gonna die one day, so just relax and enjoy this moment, whatever you happen to be doing!
The watermark literally just fell off of the document when I opened it in Inkscape. Everything else (except the watermark) rendered there, so it was completely clean just by opening. (Sorry, OP.)
I’ve been meaning to work on one that I can incrementally add to over time both historically and present day.
I would really like to have one That has labels external to the life calendar itself poking into it like a giant cactus. I don’t want to create want to go, I figure it’ll take me a full year to actually populate the thing with the events that I either recapture by residing old photos, journal entries or otherwise talking to my wife.
What can I say, I’m old and remembering important events isn’t going to happen all at once.
The Kurzgezagt shop also has some nice "Calendar of your life" posters[0] based on the
"What Are You Doing With Your Life? The Tail End" animation they did last year, which is again based on the Wait But Why article "Your Life in Weeks"[2].
Thanks, I didn't know kurzgesagt had them on their shop as well. I've ordered mine from the waitbutwhy shop after reading the blog post, which was pretty silly for a piece of paper to be sent to Germany. Oh well.
Then I got stuck filling it out: Is week #1 (the square in the top left corner) the first calendar week of my birth year? Or is it the first week of my life? The latter makes more sense, but then it gets really tedious to translate timestamps for university graduation etc. (OP takes the birthday into account and offers month markers. Good idea.)
The life calendar is now posted next to my desk, still empty half a year later. Once/if I get to filling it out, I should mark this long period of time where I have it but don't use it. Time flies.
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Cheers for the feedback :)
I used a free privacy policy generator, which in retrospect was a mistake as it is much broader than my intentions.
If anyone is worried, no data will leave the identity provider service.
Piggybacking off this comment to say, I made it 95% of the way to downloading the calendar before the "Sign in" button made me close the tab. There is no valid reason why I need to authenticate and provide you my account information to download a generic PDF, the juice ain't worth the squeeze imo.
The thought of not having anything significant to remember a week by, and then thinking about how finite those are seems to depress me more than inspire.
I feel the same way, and also about those apps people use to record a short clip or take a photograph every day. But I gather they are relatively popular, so what do I know!
I've been using one of those "short clip everyday" apps for the last 6 years. The only noticeable effect it's had on my life is that I have mundane/everyday/real-life footage of people/pets who have passed away unexpectedly. So when family members are looking for a way to remember them, they tend to ask me if I can dig up any of my "one seconds." It's a bittersweet job, but I'm glad I'm able to provide some comfort that way.
This may work wonders for others, but it would be terrible for me.
This would make me think (obsess) about running out of time and on toiling to make a "legacy". I like the exact opposite, _not_ thinking about mortality or legacy. This gives me the freedom to just enjoy every week and try to do things that make me happy.
You're not wrong. I get more stressed when I can't just think and live in the moment. Not that we should ignore the big picture, but life is the moment to moment. Trying to live like all we do is what people post on social media would just lead to a downward spiral.
> What have you done in the last week that you will remember on your death bed?
I will probably be murdered in my sleep by the person in charge of maintaining the code I'm writing right now. So, that.
But more to the point: I write code, I like writing code, and I have embraced the fact that writing code makes me happy. At the risk of sounding like the comic book guy in the Simpsons movie, I will probably look back and say "I regret nothing". I never regretted the weekend nights I spent exploring the Web with my 56k modem, and I don't think I'll start now.
This isn’t exactly the same as a deathbed experience, but about two years ago I had a devastating lumbar disc hernia that landed me in the ER with such pain that I couldn’t stand, or even roll over.
I remember thinking that my biggest regret was that I had prioritized my job over my health. I’d stopped exercising and was overeating because my work was in a bad place and I was trying to scrape together every moment to make progress, and I’m sure that had a deleterious effect on my spine health.
I resolved that going forward I would prioritize my health (and my family) over my job.
I succeeded at maintaining those priorities for a while, and luckily my back healed relatively well. But I’ll admit that job stress ramped back up, and as I felt physically better it was all to easy to shift back into the same old patterns.
Which lists the same things, same concept, but instead of a pdf, it gives you a jog of same grid.
I personally used an excel sheet with first column listing my age in years, like 0,1,2, all the way till 90.
First row has months spanning across four columns, so B1:B5 will be Jan, & so on till Dec. Last column has year in YY format, so it starts from 84,85,86 etc for total 90 years.
First row & first column, i.e. headers are fixed view.
Each of the actual cells are all light grey border, with month bounry (every 4th column) a bit darker grey. The overall boundary, 12x4= 48 columns and 90 rows have thick black border.
All columns have vertical center text, and left aligned.
All cells, columns, rows have exact same width height, not headers.
Each of the month is roughly divided between 4 parts, 1 to 7, 8 to 14, 15 to 21, & 21+.
First entry simply says Born. On my birthday.
Then school classes, they all start in April first week. First, Second etc.
Then college.
Some personal events, like birth of my siblings.
Every time something major happens (like relocation), I change the background of those cells to another pastel color.
Text left aligned, so overflow flows over to next columns.
Someday I will make a blog post at davinder.net & will attach a blank all setup excel sheet, for no money :)
Slowly approaching the point of being... well, let's call it "mature" ;) ... I'd like to offer a slightly different perspective.
When you're young, constantly focusing on your deathbed is frankly a waste of time. Focus on your friends. Focus on having experiences that make great stories to share with your friends. Enjoy life.
Don't worry, as you age, you'll certainly focus on mortality. But I'm firmly convinced that having a full, joyous life always trumps striving for doing things you'll recall on your deathbed. Once I get there, if I feel loved, that will be enough.
If you are into this, have a look at Timestripe[1]. It is done pretty nicely and well executed. I almost went into it but I didn't want to get stuck, and gave up on the tool but I do like the idea.
Might be useful for some readers. I originally saw the life calendar concept in Tim Urbans excellent TED talk about procrastination a few years back. I couldnt find one on his site so I simply used the ASCII square character on Word and printed out a box for every week from birth until I am 85.
I decided I wanted the weeks bigger so I deleted the already passed weeks, and changed the end date to proposed retirement at 65. It's not fun. I've lost the file but easy enough
The OP is paid (else watermarked). I had made a crude version of this for myself some time ago [1]. It's available for free and is somewhat customizable
The preview on the right seems to be blank, but if you click on the 'Download' link, it generates the PDF correctly/as intended.
To get a sheet where you get to cross off everything on your own, just use 0 as the age in the input box.
I did once a similar project, but for Mac only. The project was not successful at all, maybe I didn't market it properly, but it seems people don't know how to use it (it needs a lot of determination from a user).
Now I'm thinking of pivoting this thing, maybe someone want to collaborate? The siteL https://motley.place, sorry but the intro video is in Russian.
>> What have you done in the last week that you will remember on your death bed?
Why would I need to remember ANYTHING on my death bed? It's not even clear that it will be a "bed". Climate change, nuclear war, next pandemic, political violence could kill me. Even if I am happy enough to have a "bed", I will spend my last minutes watching the transition and not giving a sht to my memories.
This is interesting. I once calculated the approximate number of weeks I had left to live and wrote it on my whiteboard, estimating my lifespan from family history and trends (+ 4 years/generation for my family's men). I subtracted 1 every Monday.
My wife thought it was pretty morbid. I never thought to deliberately punctuate each week, though. It was motivating at first, but wore off.
I created my own calendar like this 2 days ago. You can mark all kinds of significant events you remember and see how they fit into your life so far. It's incredible how much things change over a few years time.
Tip: If you're from the EU, A4 paper pages with 0.5cm lines perfectly fit 52 weeks x 36 years. No printer needed.
Approaching the age of 40, I have to admit that I'll probably live a very boring and forgettable life.
I guess I'll guide my son to find some passion early in his life, so that even though his life might as well be a boring one, he himself may have the luxury of regarding it as a slightly more interesting one.
I know some youtube channels are basically "a week in my life" concepts. Seems to me trying to make a good video about your week, would motivate you to have an interesting week. Making the video would the reflective part.
Seems to me it would work better than a calendar.
I love the idea and the simplicity, but that's all out the window as soon as I'm asked to log in. Remove the login requirement and you'll likely see more use! Good luck
Memento mori is not about creating spectacular moments that you will remember in your death bed. It's about being in the present moment and always doing your best as if it's the last thing you might be doing (knowing that your best changes day to day... see The Four Agreements from Don Miguel Ruiz, the fourth agreement).
Stoicism is not about creating a memory, it's about living in the present moment.
> “Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
- William Martin
The idea that one needs to do something memorable every week sounds like a recipe for disaster, burnout at a young age or depression. So no thank you, I'll take my ordinary life which is full of ups and downs.
Sidenote: The fact that a sign up is needed to download a PDF makes me think that you're using this as a way to farm for user data and makes me distrust your intention.
I'd like to add another detail, which is that people generally accept the idea that "deathbed perspective" is a highly privileged perspective, but with no real justification for this position. Here's a good article that questions this idea: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-the-deathbed-perspective-consi...
I get that it's more a heuristic for living a good life. But life is so uncertain and your goals subject to change significantly every 5-10 years.
For me, stuff I regretted wasting time on while younger (e.g. too many video games) bring back much better memories than doing things I (mistakenly) thought had more value. Quitting gaming in my early 20's was, in retrospect, not a great idea.
But yeah, I agree with you somewhat. A lot of people who live to a fairly old age actually have said that if you live long enough, you'll realize that "nothing matters". So probably not best to put too much weight on their perspective.
https://www.nsta.org/q-if-tree-falls-forest-and-theres-no-on...
Only through solipsism one might think that nothing would exist without the current conscientiousness stream.
I agree, which is why I try to view the little things as memorable. Laying on the couch with my dog or cooking for my wife is a little thing, but amazing and memorable. Doom scrolling, not so much.
For example meeting a particularly friendly dog on the metro, a peculiar piece of graffiti, or just something a friend said that I found particularly funny.
It’s these small little moments that when stitched together over time that make up a “life well lived” in my opinion, much more so than setting large lofty goals or striving for doing “memorable” things.
I don't fancy the life calendar stuff. I am very curious by nature, and curiosity I find the most important in 'doing'. I really don't need to stimulate that, just like I don't need psychedelics or weed to get open minded (been there, done it).
The fact of death isn't what makes things valuable or meaningful.
The fact that our time span to enjoy things is limited also isn't what makes them valuable or meaningful.
The quote is describing much more than mindfulness. It's saying that values and meaning are right in front of us. To reduce that to mindfulness misses the value in what it's saying.
Mindfulness is a product of an industry seeking to capitalise on the yoga pants (and later suits) demographic, to great success. Let's not legitimise it by using it as an example of healthy thinking, because it's not.
There are some legitimate reasons to be wary of the push for mindfulness -- for example, when it is pushed by employers to try and increase employee satisfaction and retention, in lieu of actually improving their quality of life -- but that certainly doesn't mean the practice itself is bad.
>> When you realize that this tomato could be the last tomato you’ll be eating
You're confusing Stoicism with Mindfulness.
Seems tech people love them some memorizing. Live a memorable moment, load it into an Anki deck, then review memorable moments for the remainder of your days. Do one last review right before you check out.
Memento mori doesn't mean every moment needs to be absolutely epic. But a mindful approach can alleviate daily stresses, concerns, fights etc. You're gonna die one day, so just relax and enjoy this moment, whatever you happen to be doing!
The "Login after customizing everything" and "Pay to remove the watermark which renders the calendar useless" are borderline dark patterns.
But on the positive, it gave me an idea to make my own version of this calendar, sans the money grab.
I would really like to have one That has labels external to the life calendar itself poking into it like a giant cactus. I don’t want to create want to go, I figure it’ll take me a full year to actually populate the thing with the events that I either recapture by residing old photos, journal entries or otherwise talking to my wife.
What can I say, I’m old and remembering important events isn’t going to happen all at once.
[0] https://shop-eu.kurzgesagt.org/collections/existential-dread...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXeJANDKwDc
[2] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
Then I got stuck filling it out: Is week #1 (the square in the top left corner) the first calendar week of my birth year? Or is it the first week of my life? The latter makes more sense, but then it gets really tedious to translate timestamps for university graduation etc. (OP takes the birthday into account and offers month markers. Good idea.)
The life calendar is now posted next to my desk, still empty half a year later. Once/if I get to filling it out, I should mark this long period of time where I have it but don't use it. Time flies.
The Company may use Personal Data for the following purposes: To provide and maintain our Service, including to monitor the usage of our Service. To manage Your Account: to manage Your registration as a user of the Service. The Personal Data You provide can give You access to different functionalities of the Service that are available to You as a registered user. For the performance of a contract: the development, compliance and undertaking of the purchase contract for the products, items or services You have purchased or of any other contract with Us through the Service. To contact You: To contact You by email, telephone calls, SMS, or other equivalent forms of electronic communication, such as a mobile application's push notifications regarding updates or informative communications related to the functionalities, products or contracted services, including the security updates, when necessary or reasonable for their implementation. To provide You with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless You have opted not to receive such information. To manage Your requests: To attend and manage Your requests to Us. For business transfers: We may use Your information to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about our Service users is among the assets transferred. For other purposes: We may use Your information for other purposes, such as data analysis, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and to evaluate and improve our Service, products, services, marketing and your experience.
The worry comes from what you can do. If you did not want this power you would not ask for the information and explicitly say you have power over it.
- https://memento-mori-calendar.vercel.app/ - https://www.bryanbraun.com/your-life/ - https://www.ekn.io/calendar/
This would make me think (obsess) about running out of time and on toiling to make a "legacy". I like the exact opposite, _not_ thinking about mortality or legacy. This gives me the freedom to just enjoy every week and try to do things that make me happy.
I will probably be murdered in my sleep by the person in charge of maintaining the code I'm writing right now. So, that.
But more to the point: I write code, I like writing code, and I have embraced the fact that writing code makes me happy. At the risk of sounding like the comic book guy in the Simpsons movie, I will probably look back and say "I regret nothing". I never regretted the weekend nights I spent exploring the Web with my 56k modem, and I don't think I'll start now.
I remember thinking that my biggest regret was that I had prioritized my job over my health. I’d stopped exercising and was overeating because my work was in a bad place and I was trying to scrape together every moment to make progress, and I’m sure that had a deleterious effect on my spine health.
I resolved that going forward I would prioritize my health (and my family) over my job.
I succeeded at maintaining those priorities for a while, and luckily my back healed relatively well. But I’ll admit that job stress ramped back up, and as I felt physically better it was all to easy to shift back into the same old patterns.
Which lists the same things, same concept, but instead of a pdf, it gives you a jog of same grid.
I personally used an excel sheet with first column listing my age in years, like 0,1,2, all the way till 90.
First row has months spanning across four columns, so B1:B5 will be Jan, & so on till Dec. Last column has year in YY format, so it starts from 84,85,86 etc for total 90 years.
First row & first column, i.e. headers are fixed view.
Each of the actual cells are all light grey border, with month bounry (every 4th column) a bit darker grey. The overall boundary, 12x4= 48 columns and 90 rows have thick black border.
All columns have vertical center text, and left aligned.
All cells, columns, rows have exact same width height, not headers.
Each of the month is roughly divided between 4 parts, 1 to 7, 8 to 14, 15 to 21, & 21+.
First entry simply says Born. On my birthday.
Then school classes, they all start in April first week. First, Second etc.
Then college.
Some personal events, like birth of my siblings.
Every time something major happens (like relocation), I change the background of those cells to another pastel color.
Text left aligned, so overflow flows over to next columns.
Someday I will make a blog post at davinder.net & will attach a blank all setup excel sheet, for no money :)
When you're young, constantly focusing on your deathbed is frankly a waste of time. Focus on your friends. Focus on having experiences that make great stories to share with your friends. Enjoy life.
Don't worry, as you age, you'll certainly focus on mortality. But I'm firmly convinced that having a full, joyous life always trumps striving for doing things you'll recall on your deathbed. Once I get there, if I feel loved, that will be enough.
1. https://timestripe.com
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.machineryc...
I decided I wanted the weeks bigger so I deleted the already passed weeks, and changed the end date to proposed retirement at 65. It's not fun. I've lost the file but easy enough
The talk https://youtu.be/arj7oStGLkU
The preview on the right seems to be blank, but if you click on the 'Download' link, it generates the PDF correctly/as intended.
To get a sheet where you get to cross off everything on your own, just use 0 as the age in the input box.
[1]: http://q.ht/life-in-weeks-on-one-sheet/
Now I'm thinking of pivoting this thing, maybe someone want to collaborate? The siteL https://motley.place, sorry but the intro video is in Russian.
Why would I need to remember ANYTHING on my death bed? It's not even clear that it will be a "bed". Climate change, nuclear war, next pandemic, political violence could kill me. Even if I am happy enough to have a "bed", I will spend my last minutes watching the transition and not giving a sht to my memories.
My wife thought it was pretty morbid. I never thought to deliberately punctuate each week, though. It was motivating at first, but wore off.
1) need to register to get the pdf...i did it but i consider it really too much for such service so i used a throwaway email account
2) i couldn't download it using chrome (is it me only? i can download files from everywhere)
3) on Safari i downloaded the pdf but it was blank except for the quote written on the footer of the page
However, why on earth do I have to sign in?
Tip: If you're from the EU, A4 paper pages with 0.5cm lines perfectly fit 52 weeks x 36 years. No printer needed.
I guess I'll guide my son to find some passion early in his life, so that even though his life might as well be a boring one, he himself may have the luxury of regarding it as a slightly more interesting one.
May I suggest you make it clear from the front page that the design costs 10$ ?