The Life Calendar

Written By Brien Convery

The Life Calendar: The Simple Visual That Changed How I Think About My Time

Every now and then, you come across an idea that you can’t “unsee.”

For me, one of those ideas came from Tim Urban’s TED Talk, “Inside the mind of a master procrastinator.”

The entire talk is worth watching, but there was one part that hit me harder than anything else: what he calls the Life Calendar.

I won’t recreate his whole explanation here that’s his story to tell but I’ll share what shifted for me when I sat with that visual.

Seeing Your Life as Boxes, Not Years

Near the end of the talk, Tim shows a simple image: a grid where each small box represents one week in a 90‑year life.

That’s it. No dramatic graphics. No complicated math. Just boxes.

But seeing life laid out like that does something your usual 12‑month calendar never does:

  • You see, in one view, how finite it all is.

  • You realize how many boxes you’ve already used.

  • You see how few boxes remain for the things you keep saying you’ll “get to later.”

For me, that visual quietly reframed a lot of my thinking about time, work, and priorities.

“Someday” Looks Different When You Count Boxes

We all have a mental list of things we’ll do “someday”:

  • Start or scale a new business initiative.

  • Change direction in our career.

  • Write, create, or launch something.

  • Fix or deepen key relationships.

  • Take our health, learning, or impact more seriously.

Before the Life Calendar, “someday” felt vague but harmless like there would always be more room in the future.

After seeing that grid, “someday” became far more concrete:

  • How many boxes do I realistically have left where I’ll have the energy and bandwidth for a major change?

  • How many boxes do I want to dedicate to work vs. family vs. health vs. exploration?

  • How many boxes have I already spent thinking about something instead of actually doing it?

The Life Calendar turned an abstract sense of time into something I could almost hold in my hands.

Procrastination as a Use of Boxes

What really struck me is how this visual changes our understanding of procrastination.

Instead of thinking:

“I’m wasting an afternoon.”

The Life Calendar makes you think:

“I’m spending one of a very limited number of boxes.”

Not every box has to be “optimized,” of course. Rest, fun, aimless time all of that matters.

But it did make me confront a harder question:

  • How many boxes have I already spent on things that don’t really matter to me?

  • How many boxes have I let slip by while telling myself comforting stories about what I’ll do “later”?

That’s when procrastination stops looking like a minor productivity issue and starts looking more like a pattern of how I’m spending the only boxes I get.

How I’m Using the Life Calendar in Practice

Since absorbing this idea, I’ve prioritized:

1. Choosing where to invest my best weeks I ask: If I only had, say, 500 really high‑energy weeks left, is this how I’d want to spend one of them?

2. Bringing “later” into the present For goals with no deadlines, I’ve stopped saying “someday” and started saying:

  • “Which box?”

  • “Which month?”

  • “Which specific week am I willing to allocate to starting this?”

It forces me to anchor intentions to time, not just to feelings.

3. Accepting trade‑offs more honestly Every yes is a no to something else. The Life Calendar makes that trade‑off visible. If I choose not to start something important this year, I’m not “saving” time. I’m making a decision that X number of boxes will not contain that experience or result.

If the Life Calendar Idea Resonates with You

If you’ve ever had the sense that you’re “behind on your own life,” or that you’re watching certain dreams from the sidelines, I genuinely recommend watching Tim Urban’s talk and seeing the Life Calendar for yourself.

Tim Urban – “Inside the mind of a master procrastinator” (TED Talk) You can find it on TED.com or YouTube by searching the title.

The visual is simple, but its impact comes from seeing it and letting it sink in.

The Life Calendar doesn’t tell you how to live. But it makes it much harder to pretend you have unlimited time to start.

And that, for me, has been a powerful antidote to the kind of procrastination that doesn’t show up on your daily to‑do list but quietly shapes your entire trajectory.

The views expressed here are my own and do not represent the views of my employer or any other organization.

Brien Convery

I’m an American | Canadian, born in New York, now living my best life in Toronto, Canada.

My three core values are Authenticity, Creativity and Adventure and I believe in elevating Equity, activating Diversity and leading Inclusively.

As a purpose-driven, people-centric executive with years of diversified and progressive global experience, my work spans many disciplines across a variety of public and private sectors and industries with a specialized focus on Consumer Products, Technology, Management Consulting Services, Federal Government, Human Resources/ Talent Acquisition, Financial Services and Banking, Construction, Real Estate and Higher Education.

I have been a buyer, a plant warehouse supervisor, a consultant, a project manager, a business development manager, a marketer, an operations head, a learning and knowledge management global leader, a workforce transformation executive, a diversity and inclusion workforce partner, a talent officer, an executive in residence and a public speaker as part of my overall career portfolio.

With my non-linear ride to success and happiness, I have experienced a life time of learning through a diversity of experiences and have gained many transferable skills to give me a unique perspective and approach to life and work.

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