You have 53 million minutes to live

How are you going to spend it

I was wondering around Toyko muesume during the hot summer of 2023, and I came across the work of On Kawara. A Japnese conceptual artist who was obessed with time. My favorite piece of his is a massive analouge calendar in which he recorded how productive he was on a given day.

On Kawara's 100 year calendar
On Kawara's 100 year calendar, image from diaart.org

The calendar is about 2m wide and 1m tall and shows 100 year's worth of days since the time of the artist's birth. Yellow dots indicate a piece of art was produced. He His work got me thinking about how we measure our time and productivity, and how limited we are due to the meduim in which we record.

Calendars are great for remembering that your grans brithday is coming up, but if you try to do anything complicated with them, it just doesn't work. Try adding your workout routine or diet plan and it will quickly devolve into a overwhelming mess.

In an economy as uncertain as ours, its important to take care of your most valuable assest, your time. Everyday, we are gifted 24 hours and each of has unquie responsiblities and goals.

The current vision for the digital calendar is still a skeduomoric one. You're using a pen and paper calednar on your device that can also render vr reality

Here are a few things a regular calendar can't do: