Life Dots, example: born 1990
Your life in weeks, on your dashboard
Put in your birthday once and Life Dots draws your life as a grid of dots, one for each week, with the weeks you've lived filled in. Months and years are a click away, and the grid stays on your board on every computer you sign in on.
- Needs
- Your birthday
- Reads from
- Your birthday and your computer's clock
- Updates
- A new dot each week, on its own
The long view, beside the short one
Life Dots next to Year Dots, today's date and the daily prompt. The board is saved to your account, so it's there on every computer you sign in on.
Year Dots
Date
Daily Prompt
Clock
Every tile here is live in your browser. The Life Dots tile uses an example birth year of 1990, shown in years.
What you can set
- Birthday
- A date. Everything is counted from it.
- Life span
- In years, from 1 to 130. A new widget starts at 80.
- Weeks, months or years
- Buttons in the widget's header switch the grid. Weeks draws 52 to a year and months 12 to a year. Years draws one dot a year in rows of ten, so each row is a decade.
- The grid
- The filled dots are the time you've lived, and the current week, month or year is lighter, with an outline. In weeks and months the grid reflows to fit the tile, so a row isn't a year.
- Age
- The header shows your age in whole years.
- Where it lives
- On your board, saved to your account with your birthday, and the same on every computer you sign in on.
Where the idea comes from
Tim Urban drew a life in weeks in his 2014 Wait But Why post, Your Life in Weeks: one box per week, 52 to a row, for a 90-year life. Oliver Burkeman's book Four Thousand Weeks starts from a similar sum: "If you live to be 80, you'll have had about 4,000 weeks."
Life Dots keeps that picture where you see it every day. It's a way of looking at time, not a forecast: the span is the number you type, and the widget works out nothing about you.
What it does not do
- It doesn't estimate how long you'll live. It draws the span you choose.
- It doesn't mark chapters, events or goals.
- It doesn't print a count of weeks lived or left. The dots are the count.
- There's no phone widget and nothing to print. It lives on your board.
Questions people ask
What is a life calendar?
A grid with one small box for every week of a life, with the weeks already lived filled in. Tim Urban made it well known in his 2014 Wait But Why post, Your Life in Weeks. Life Dots is a life calendar as a widget on your DashSuey board.
Is there a digital version of a life calendar?
Yes: web pages that draw one from your birthday, phone apps, Notion embeds and browser extensions. Life Dots puts one on your DashSuey board next to your other widgets, and the board is saved to your account, so the grid is there in any browser you sign in on. There's no phone app.
How many weeks have I lived?
Count the days since you were born and divide by seven. Life Dots does that sum and shows the answer as filled dots rather than a number. The line under the widget at the top of this page gives the number.
How many weeks are in a lifetime?
It depends on the life. Eighty years is about 4,174 weeks, and ninety about 4,696. Life calendars round to 52 weeks a year, which gives the figures you see quoted: 4,160 for 80 years and 4,680 for 90. Life Dots draws 52 a year too.
How many years is 4,000 weeks?
About 76 years and 8 months. The number comes from Oliver Burkeman's book Four Thousand Weeks.
Can I see my life in months or years instead?
Yes. The Weeks, Months and Years buttons in the widget's header switch the grid. Years draws one dot a year in rows of ten, so each row is a decade.
Can I change the life span?
Yes. Open the widget's settings and set Life span, in years. The grid redraws to that length.
Is my birthday private?
Your birthday is saved with your board in your DashSuey account. That is how the widget follows you to your other computers, and the privacy page lists it among what DashSuey keeps. A date you type into the widget on this page stays in this browser tab.
Can I put a life calendar on my computer?
Yes. DashSuey is a web page you sign into, so Life Dots works in the browser on Windows, a Mac or anything else, with nothing to install. It isn't a browser extension or a phone widget.