Want a Better Life Strategy? Track Your Life in Weeks. Try the Life Chart.

We overestimate what we can do in a week…
And completely ignore the 5,218 weeks that make up a long, healthy life.

That’s right. You only get 5,218 weeks if you live to 100.
The real question is: What are you doing with them?

Bring in the life chart. A tool to bring perspective and give space for personal reflection.

Why track your life in weeks?

Because it gives you something most people never stop to gain: perspective.

When you zoom out, the hard weeks shrink in size. The joyful seasons stand out. The painful seasons are put into perspective. Patterns reveal themselves.

It’s like building your own personal dashboard for life and strategy.

Three reasons this tool works:

I use this tool in high-level coaching and to assist clients when they need deeper context while completing the Values-Driven Achievement Workbook. It helps my clients align their values, set more effective goals, and recover more quickly when life gets messy.

How to Chart Your Life in Weeks (Built for Hard™ Edition)

This exercise helps you reflect on your past, reclaim your energy, and reorient toward your future.

You can do it on a spreadsheet, mural paper, whiteboard, your journal, or any surface your family allows you to write on without starting a fight. If you're lucky enough to attend one of my workshops or coaching sessions, I'll provide you with a large piece of paper to use, just like the photos.

Here's the process:

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Count your life in weeks.
   Start from your birth week. Plot each week of your life until today. That’s 52 per year. You can use squares, dots, or anything that feels satisfying to fill in.
2. Mark the key moments.
   Highlight events that mattered—wins, losses, pivots, heartbreaks, breakthroughs. Anything that shaped who you are.
3. Use colour to map your life across the 8 Built for Hard™ domains:
   • Body: Times of peak fitness, illness, injury, recovery, or major lifestyle changes.
   • Mind: Schooling, major learning moments, mental health wins and challenges, new ways of thinking.
   • Spirit: Breakthroughs in meaning, purpose, values, faith, or identity.
   • Family: Births, deaths, marriages, separations, reconciliations. Include chosen family too.
   • Work: Job changes, major wins, promotions, layoffs, failures, and entrepreneurial leaps.
   • Habits: New routines, disciplines, addictions, breaking cycles, building systems.
   • Tribe: Mentors, friends, teammates, communities—when they arrived, left, or changed you.
   • Impact: Times you led, served, built something that mattered, or helped others thrive.
4. Label and reflect.
   Add short notes or symbols for context. “Started new business.” “Burnout.” “Found my crew.” Let your past speak.
5. Look for patterns.
   What themes repeat? Which areas were dominant in each season? What was missing in tough years? What values showed up when life was good?
6. Zoom out—and zoom in.
   Step back and take in the full picture. Then zoom in on a few pivotal chapters. What made the difference? What pain turned into purpose?

Optional Enhancements:

What you’ll discover

This isn’t just a walk down memory lane. It’s a structured way to uncover:

And when those themes surface, your values do, too.

Why it matters

Tracking your life in weeks provides a foundation for effective life planning.

This exercise helps you:

It’s one of the most effective tools I use with clients who are burned out, blocked, or simply ready to take the next big step.

Final Thought

You don’t need more time. You need a better relationship with the time you already have.

This exercise was inspired by two powerful sources: the Stoic principle of memento mori — a reminder to reflect on the brevity of life — and the viral blog post “The Tail End” by Tim Urban at Wait But Why. The Stoics encouraged visual reminders of mortality not to induce fear, but to inspire urgency and clarity in how we live each day. Urban’s piece puts this into perspective by breaking life down into weeks, highlighting how few meaningful moments we have left with loved ones. These ideas combined into a tool I now use to help clients and course participants live more strategically and intentionally.

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Adam Kreek is on a mission to positively impact organizational cultures and leaders who make things happen.

Kreek is an Executive Business Coach who lives in Victoria, BC, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and Seattle, Washington, USA, in the Pacific Northwest. He works with clients globally, often travelling to California in the San Francisco Bay Area, Atlanta, Georgia, Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. He is an Olympic Gold Medalist, a storied adventurer and a father.

He authored the bestselling business book, The Responsibility Ethic: 12 Strategies Exceptional People Use to Do the Work and Make Success Happen. 

Want to increase your leadership achievement? Learn more about Kreek’s coaching here.

Want to book a keynote that leaves a lasting impact? Learn more about Kreek’s live event service here.