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Your life in weeks

Every week of a long life fits on one page. Enter your birth date to see the week you’re in, the weeks behind you and the weeks ahead, then share it or print it as a poster. Free, and your birth date never leaves your browser.

Starts at life expectancy at birth for everyone in World, 2024: 73.5 years. Source: World Bank (UN World Population Prospects).

Your birth date stays in this browser. It is never sent to Smartonic; the share picture and link carry only two numbers.

A blank 74-year life in weeks010203040506070

A 73.5-year life is about 3,835 weeks. Enter your birth date to fill in the ones you have lived.

Print it as a poster

Pick a paper size, then Print. To get a PDF, choose “Save as PDF” as the printer.

How it works

  1. Enter your birth date. The calculator counts the whole weeks since you were born, using your own device's calendar.
  2. Check the lifespan. It starts at life expectancy at birth for your country, from World Bank figures. Move the slider to draw a longer or shorter life.
  3. Read the grid. Each row is one year of your life. Filled squares are weeks you have lived; the red square is this week.
  4. Share it or print it. Download the picture, send a link, or print a poster on A4, A3 or Letter paper.

Where the numbers come from

A year is 52 weeks and one day, two in a leap year, so the calculator uses the average Gregorian year: 365.2425 days, or about 52.18 weeks. A 79-year life comes to about 4,122 weeks; a 90-year life to about 4,696.

Rows follow your birthdays, so the numbers down the side are your real ages. Because a year runs a little over 52 weeks, about one row in six holds a 53rd week, which shares the row’s last square.

The starting lifespan is life expectancy at birth from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, which take it from the UN’s World Population Prospects (licence CC BY 4.0). The figure for the world as a whole in 2024 is 73.5 years. It is an average for a whole generation, not a forecast for any one person, which is why the slider is there.

Why weeks

Tim Urban’s 2014 Wait But Why post Your Life in Weeks drew a 90-year life as one page of weekly boxes, and the format stuck. Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks takes its title from the same arithmetic: “If you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks.” The thin red line on the grid marks the point where you reach 4,000 weeks.

A week is a useful unit because it is the one most plans are made in. Days are too many to see at once, and years pass too slowly to notice one going by.

What to do with a week

Seeing the grid is the easy part. A few ways to use it:

  • Decide what the next 52 weeks are for. The ikigai worksheet helps sort what you love from what you’re good at and what pays.
  • Protect a few weekends. If hobbies have slipped, start with how to make time for hobbies with a full-time job.
  • Plan one hard, memorable thing this year. That is the idea behind a misogi.
  • Come back on a Monday. The calculator asks a new question each week.

FAQ

How long is 4,000 weeks?
About 76.7 years. A year averages 52.18 weeks (365.2425 days divided by 7), and 4,000 divided by 52.18 is 76.7. You reach 4,000 weeks a few months before your 77th birthday.
How many weeks are in a year?
52 weeks and one day, or 52 weeks and two days in a leap year. Averaged over the Gregorian calendar, that is about 52.18 weeks a year.
Where does the 4,000 weeks number come from?
From Oliver Burkeman's book Four Thousand Weeks. In his words: "If you live to be 80, you'll have had about 4,000 weeks." The exact figure for 80 years is about 4,174 weeks.
Why count a life in weeks?
A week is small enough to picture, Monday to Sunday, and large enough that a whole life fits on one page: four to five thousand squares. Counting in days would take around 30,000 squares for an 82-year life.
Is this a prediction of how long I will live?
No. The starting lifespan is life expectancy at birth: an average for everyone born in your country in one year. You can draw any lifespan from 50 to 105 years. The grid shows the shape of a life, not a forecast for yours.
Is my birth date stored or sent anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in your browser, and your details are saved only in this browser's storage so the page remembers you; "Forget my details" clears them. The share picture and link carry two numbers: the week you are in and the total weeks you picked. Someone who knows the day you shared could work out your birth week from them, so share it where you would share your birthday.
How do I print it as a poster or save it as a PDF?
Under "Print it as a poster", pick A4, A3 or Letter and press Print. For a PDF, choose "Save as PDF" as the printer. There is also a blank 90-year poster to fill in by hand.
What is a memento mori calendar?
A life calendar like this one. Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning "remember that you will die", long used in art and writing as a reminder to spend the present well. This version keeps the idea and drops the gloom: no countdown, just the week you are in and the weeks ahead.

Credits: Tim Urban, “Your Life in Weeks” (Wait But Why, 2014); Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks; life expectancy data from the World Bank (CC BY 4.0). Smartonic is not affiliated with Tim Urban, Wait But Why or Oliver Burkeman. Updated 2026-10-18.