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Show HN: Day by Day – every day of my life

days.rory.codes

144 pointsmrroryflint86 comments

Depressing and inspiring.

My dad gave me seven stones once. He said each is a decade of time you have. Then took two away, and threw them. He said use the rest as you can.

I have a similar page that generates my life in weeks: https://diary.geekodour.org/ It's a hugo site with the dates linking to hugo posts. I agree with the first comment, this definitely gets depressing at times but guess it is what it is :)

Could you share how do you accomplish this? I would love to make a similar one for my Hugo site. Thanks!

sure, it's a little personal but i just made the repo public, here you go:

- https://github.com/geekodour/diary/blob/main/content-org/wee...

- https://github.com/geekodour/diary/blob/main/layouts/partial...

Basically it's very badly written elisp code that populates the same org file with metadata like week number etc. and then I have a custom hugo layout for writing out the weeks into posts.

All of this is tied together by https://github.com/kaushalmodi/ox-hugo

Looks great - I love the design.

thanks! :)

How has that influenced you?

Is it something you remember frequently? Did you make any decisions keeping that in mind? Would you say it had a positive impact in your life, and gave it more meaning? Or would you rather not have been given that awareness?

I find it a great metaphor, and I'm planning to tell my kid about it

Can I at least have 8 stones?

If you eat healthy, exercise, have a family/pet/social life and don't stress too much, then likely yes.

I would throw one more. Because:

20 years old is too late to start any personal development, try this approach with stones to 10 years old instead.

50 years old is a final point due to "A Mathematician's Apology" by Hardy.

Oh no! So any personal development I experienced since I turned 20 was fake? I never would've thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology

‘In his foreword to the 1967 edition of the book, C. P. Snow describes the Apology as "a passionate lament for creative powers that used to be and that will never come again".’

20 years old is too late to start any personal development?

Is that a reference to the book or a genuine opinion?

Well it is obvious that the father does this when his son is a 20 yo. And it is obvious that this is a clever hint. My point is why not to do this when his son is 10 yo?

Probably because the father was only just 30 when his son had turned 10 and hadn't realised yet that he had already lost 3 stones.

That said I feel I still have plenty to share with my children and now grand children - each day is a gift and each one will have mundane tasks, challenges and triumphs that all need to be dealt with accordingly.

Why not stone the child at birth?

Maybe at ten the child would be able to understand the words, but do you really learn the lesson when they have not yet spent a decade of being a teenager that is now over?

I didn't gather that from the comment, and tend to agree with the other reply. 20 is probably the earliest that someone would grasp an idea like that, and maybe >40 would be a good time to have realized it yourself.

At age 10 you're still truly a child, you don't know shit about shit. Age 20, you still probably don't know shit about shit, but you might

Spoken like a 20-something.

Reminds me of this quote from Steve Jobs' famous commencement speech:

    Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

There's a lot to lose, in fact. Anyone who has lived in deep poverty and watched as loved ones became homeless or suffer from painful/serious health conditions because treatment is too expensive knows how much there is to lose.

Having seen both sides of this first hand, I certainly agree that the world can put a lot of pressure on you to behave or not behave in certain ways. You may need to take a job that you don’t like instead of starting a business.

But if you want to get unstuck and break free from that rut, it’s important to take risks. Hard work and determination only gets you so far, you also need imagination and willingness to step outside of your comfort zone.

Exactly, it's extremely privileged to believe one has nothing to lose, because it implies they won't be that bad off if they fail.

I grew up in poverty and fought to get out of it. I am well aware at any point I could fuck up and fall back into it permanently. I have everything to lose and long term stability is more important than taking risks in the hope they work out.

Given that the quote is talking about following your heart, I think the intention is to combat the idea of "I want to follow my heart but am scared of losing what I have". So the quote's intention would be "you might lose everything due to other unforeseen circumstances anyway so just follow your heart".

Just as there are different descriptions of reality depending on the scale under discussion - quantum vs cosmological and everything in between - there are different scales to describe experience and, in particular, suffering. I think this is what Jobs was getting at, albeit it perhaps a bit too obliquely.

It is easy to not care about money, when you have enough of it.

A very serious and/or disabling health condition could deplete your savings in a few months even if you are considered middle class and have health/disability insurance. There's no guarantees there. Also, becoming homeless is extremely unlikely as long as you are healthy and able to work. Even a $15/hr job can put a roof over your head and buy you food.

> Even a $15/hr job can put a roof over your head and buy you food.

That's iffy, you might need to pick one, but "healthy" is also a pretty wildly varying thing and being able to work doesn't mean someone will give you work. Ya, maybe a temp agency will get you something if you're lucky, but then you also need to get rather lucky to get a place even if you can pay for it sometimes.

Sucks to say it, but if the majority of your work history is as a programmer and you fall on hard times, you're not at the top of any hiring list for a low-wage entry-level position.

In your first sentence you forgot to include "if you live in America."

I think you mean "if you live in most parts of the world."

I think this is a good coping mechanism, though I disagree that you should always follow your heart. We are often not mature or knowledgeable enough, and our heart makes dumb, impulsive decisions which can hurt us and the ones we love. Our practical, rational side is there to temper that part of us.

Cultivate wisdom so that you can live a good life and die without regrets is better to me than following your heart.

So let’s use drugs today and gamble everything I have at the casino because I know I am going to die one day and there is nothing to lose ? Sounds rhetorical but not practical

If that's your idea of a good life, then why not?

What a hilariously entitled rich person thing to say.

I mean…in all fairness, he didn’t come from much and made himself rich.

> 5th January 2023: Found out Rebecca was pregnant.

> 7th February 2023: My father passes away.

That's right up there with For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

My dad passed about a year before my first born. I really wish he got to meet her. Only 51 too. Stupid US medical system.

Was a tough time - I wish I could have told him we were expecting but alas.

I'm sorry for your loss, and I hope fatherhood brings you joy.

I would love to see something like this, but automatically generated using the pictures I took.

My smartphone photos-timeline dates back to 2008, which I can scroll through chronologically. But there is no "overview".

Coincidentally, yesterday I finished reading "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals" (https://www.harvard.com/book/four_thousand_weeks/).

It's a great book if you feel overwhelmed with all the things you must/should/want to do and struggle getting the most out of your remaining weeks.

Thanks for the recommendation - I just got back from the local bookshop and managed to grab a paperback copy.

>14th March 2018 "Read 'Yes Man' by Danny Boyle. Changes everything."

Hmm, Danny Wallace[0] perhaps?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Man_(book)

It is a fantastic book. Different to the film adaption, but every bit as good. Danny Wallace is my God.

Good spot - thank you!

Having a mortality crisis is common after your dad dies, as seems to be happening with the author of this site. This is definitely not the way to deal with it, IMO.

You may be right! I would argue that these charts, which typically depict weeks, have been of interest to me from around 2008 when I saw a Calvin & Hobbes version on Tumblr.

That being said, it is probably no coincidence that I made this soon after my Dad passed away. Though I think it is likely also the impending birth of my first child contributing also.

“Found out Rebecca was pregnant” really caught me off guard because I thought she delivered twins two weeks after the wedding!

I suppose Bella and Trix are cats.

Ha - yeah they are indeed.

Many commenters have remarked that this is “grim” or “depressing”. I couldn’t disagree more. It is the limited amount of time we have here that gives every day value. This is a reminder to make the most of every day, because our days are numbered.

For myself, I’m 26. I’m more than a third of the way done with my life, and I feel like I’m just getting started. But it’s so easy to let each day slip by, without consciously thinking about what I’m doing on a given day, or why. When I see it put into perspective that a third of my life is gone, I feel motivated not to waste the remaining time I have; I think, what am I going to do with those dots?

> I’m more than a third of the way done with my life

I'm just about to hit 61% and also feel like I'm just getting started (mainly due to wasting a whole bunch of years on trying to please other people, trying to fit in, etc.)

My OCD begs that you get rid of the dot representing the day before you were born, thus fixing that final line with one lonely dot on it.

The dots are spread out according to your window size, for my default view there is no line with a lonely dot on it.

This is great. For me, visually representing this data always has more impact.

If you’ve not read it, I recommend Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. https://www.oliverburkeman.com/books

And I just listened to this episode of Hidden Brain the other day which has a similar theme. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/the-best-years-of-your-life/

Thanks for the recommendation - I just got back from the local bookshop and managed to grab a paperback copy.

Thank you for both recommendations, will check them out!

> Life 38.10% complete

well that was a downer on the night, i was already having a little struggle with feeling like time is running out.

Humans don't really experience time the way it is presented here - as an equally distributed sequence of quantities. I wouldn't take it too seriously. Why let clocks dictate to you how to feel about finitude?

not so much about the experience, the feeling there is only so much time left, to learn and get good at new things and hobbies, switch careers, have kids, travel, be fit

Oh, I feel kinda sad now because I was working on a project doing this exact thing, I knew that these memento mori charts were out there but didn't know adding notes to it had also been done. Anyway, I guess I'll still finish my project.

Please do!

Something similar I made a year ago (way more detailed aggregates but no specific dates) https://lostmsu.github.io/life33/?life-full

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29063094

Would love to have a similar and shorter representation dotting how much time you have left in your youth or being physically and mentally capable of doing things you love.

Yeah I had thought similiar. One of the calendars on Tim Urban's blog article has quite a nice separation of youth, career, retirement etc but I think your delineations are more pertinent.

I love visual representations of time passing like this, they really help to put it in perspective.

I use something similiar that only covers a year (kinda like GitHub's activity view) and it helps me visualise that future events, such as a half marathon that seems like ages away, is actually only 8 Sunday runs away.

Great idea - is it online anywhere?

I started with a simple paper template I print out[1] but I'm working on an web app for it. I'm hoping to make the web app available very soon.

[1] https://github.com/dattiimo/yearplanner

What i learned from this project is that it will be way brighter if you started it a few decades earlier. Also i have a little complain that i need to wait for too long before a baloon appears at any black square while having an impression that a baloon to a gray dot appears almost instantly. I know this is due to a weak laptop with 1-core CPU which i am using right now.

That's good to know - thanks. I am using a library called React-Tooltip and even on a very high spec computer it doesn't feel as fast as I would like. I will investigate!

I look at things like this post and then look at my manager breathing down my neck for an artificial deadline. I have made the wrong choice more than once in life.

I wonder - is my humanity lost? Am I going to end up being that old guy with soulless droopy eyes? With no friends? With no real connections?

Oh my lord, this is grim. For everything that could have been, your life is reduced to worker bee dots and squares on a graph?

These look like tally marks in a Great Escape prison camp, but instead of four walls containing you, it's time. The West is dead, long live the West /s.

Congrats on the marriage and new family.

I think this is really all about which framing you choose.

For me, a visualization like this is more about trying to live life with a greater awareness of the passage of time and to give myself the choice to alter course more often.

I don’t think I’d want to put this on my refrigerator, but it’s a useful periodic orientation thing.

For me personally, I’ve found that contemplating these things head on reduces my underlying generalized anxiety, which seems fueled primarily by the uncomfortable things my brain wants to avoid.

I guess you wouldn’t like the WeCroak app. (Their website appears to have … ahem … died.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20230528015034/https://www.wecro...

“The WeCroak app is inspired by a Bhutanese folk saying: to be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily.”

I do some creative work is very important to me and that I publish as a github page. That's made me realised that in some way the heatmap of my github activity can be viewed as my own version of this.

My dad passed away before 45 days and I can understand how it feels to loose an important person in your life. I am also trying to rethink what to do with life to make maximum impact.

Hi OP - you might be interested in something I tried to launch but didn't succeed at getting traction. sundialcalendar.com

The idea is a calendar for your whole life. Would love to find a new home for it.

Cool idea!

I have thought about this as well thinking it would motivate me but idk... if I really cared about not wanting to die I would devote my life to brain to machine consciousness transfer.

Is 85 a little conservative for someone born in the 90s? On the flip side what have we achieved in the last thirty years which will allow for people to live beyond that?

Good question - for my own purposes I'd rather be conservative but you have a very valid point.

Reminds me of this video: https://youtu.be/JXeJANDKwDc

I love this. Is it open source? I would love to create my own with my milestones.

Found it with google: https://github.com/ruairidhflint/days-left

I guess so? It's pretty janky and a day or two of light work in between more serious commitments but feel free to take it and do what you will!

> It's pretty janky

There's 31,000+ divs generated. If you shave the unnecessary code from each one you could save several megabytes of repeated text in total. e.g.

- replace all the inline CSS with a couple of declarations in a stylesheet

- remove the class names on the round divs. Add a class only to the square ones.

- data-tooltip-id="tooltip" data-tooltip-html="..." is also repetitive. You could replace it with simply data-text="..."

- better still, add the text as content to the divs, hide it with CSS, and use :hover to reveal it.

I am curious - nice interface BTW. Is the code for this anywhere?

Condolences on the loss of your father earlier this year

Reply on news.ycombinator.com