I picture it like calendar pages, stretching out in both directions from the current month.
For me, my visual depiction of regular numbers is weirder…I can ONLY picture 1-12 on a clock face, and then on a number line that stretches up from 12 into infinity. I must have learned my numbers on a clock face when I was a kid.
Interesting! I’ve noticed that when I look at the time, I usually convert the digital numbers into an analog version. And nothing gets me moving faster than seeing how much is left on the clock face before my next meeting, but the number value on the taskbar gets a “meh, I can make it!”.
Hmm. Calendar year. looks up at ceiling
I have this mental movie of an old ratcheting mechanism in my head, with the months ratcheting backward out of sight as they change. I’m not sure why that is, but that’s what’s in my brain when it comes to the calendar year.
When you’re talking about periods measured in days or weeks, I usually visualize a more familiar grid layout with highlighted boxes running from Day A to Day B.
And I second the inquiry as to what kind of perpetual calendar that was. I would totally get one for my desk, unless it costs a king’s ransom. I don’t know any kings.
:eek: This is PRECISELY my visualization – days, weeks, months, years, centuries. I’ve been reading along, trying to describe how I ‘see’ it all, and here comes Chuck, doing it for me! :eek: :eek:
Interesting. You calendar-visualizers might want to investigate the possibility that you have synesthesia–that’s one of the forms of it. Me, I’m a synesthete, but I visualize letters and numbers as having color. I don’t do the calendar-visualization thing (but I wish I did–it sounds cool!) The spouse gets visualizations of music when he hears it. There are lots of different varieties of synesthesia.
A circle made of rectangles, where each month looks like a calendar page. The months proceed counter-clockwise, starting with January at 11 o’clock, summer months toward the bottom, and December at 12 o’clock. The only problem with my circle is that Jan-June are all crammed together so that July and August are on the bottom, at about 6:30 and 5:30, which leaves Sept-Nov all spread out on the other side of the circle. I think that I originally positioned July/Aug. (in my mind) as directly across from Dec. because I envisioned those 2 longer chunks of school holiday at key points on the “year-clock”. Everything else is just filler.
It’s a big circle, with January at “noon”, then I travel clock-wise down the curve through all the months and around to December.
But weeks are linear–Sunday–> to Saturday (to the point that I can’t stand calendars that start weeks on Mondays).
days are also circular–whenever I wake up, that is the lower left bottom of the circle (approx. 0700) and I move through the day, up and over noon, swooping down to 6pm, then climbing back up to midnight…
decades are bars, but centuries are timelines for me.
hours are spaces or slots, but minutes are also round.
This is the kind of stuff that fascinates me–I wish researchers would study this kind of stuff.
Yeah, a squared off circle composed of rectangular months. You travel counterclockwise.
December is the lower left corner, then January, then February. The it tilts up to March, April, May. Then June, July and August up and to the left of May. Then September directly below August, then October and November and December in a line pretty much straight down.
The year has a kind of topology to it, so that some months can have a higher elevation than others. For the most part, the year is a constant upward climb, but the month of December is flat, as are the months of June, July, and August. Each year is successively higher than the previous.
Days don’t have a shape, but weeks are shallow, ascending steps, with Monday through Friday comprising the horizontal face, and Saturday and Sunday on the vertical axis.
Months are vaguely rectangular – like a calender page, I guess.
My visualization is very simple and I thought it would be more popular, but I guess not. I see the calendar as a long scroll seven columns wide, one for each day of the week. Sunday is at the far left and Saturday is at the far right. The days are simply numbers slotting into their respective positions in that grid. The scroll extends without breaks endlessly up (into the past) and down (into the future); there are black lines separating months from each other. (A line is mostly horizontal but will jog up and over at perfectly right angles if the month ends on some day other than a Saturday.) I can mentally highlight blocks of time within my little calendar scroll but mostly it is without color.
The calendar year for me is like . . . a calendar. If you took the pages of a calendar and laid the months out in a vertical line, that’s what it’s like in my head, stretching out to infinity.
Though I don’t generally visualize it at all, since numbers and time aren’t my strong point. I’m more likely to just think a date through, without visualizing the months or anything. If it’s history I’m thinking of, I usually picture the other significant historical events around it to place it in a timeline – kind of like a filmed version of the best of history. (“Oh, 1776, signing of the Declaration – nice pants, Mr. Jefferson. Seneca Falls Convention, 1848. Bam, in between them, Lewis and Clark expedition.”) There are a great many impressive mustaches in my visualizations.
I agree. In fact I’m pretty much baffled by the concept of visualization. I don’t think I do it at all and have always taken it as metaphor. Meaning “if I would have to make a diagram, I would start out drawing an ellipse, or a rectangle, or whatever”. People in this thread seem to be talking as though they’re literally seeing something when they say the word “year”. Like the people that talk about seeing the scenes in a book that they’re reading. That doesn’t happen for me at all.
So, visualizers out there, exactly how much of what you’re saying is metaphor, and how much is real?
I’m a very visual person, and my dreams etc are always vivid, but this is one area where it’s a bit murky. However, if you push me, I will think of a year (or other unit of time) as utterly lineal. It’s a straight, skinny rectangular area about 20ft wide by a few hundred feet long, and the divisions (months, in this case) are represented by weak barriers (think of the paper signs that sporting teams can run through effortlessly at the start of a match). I slowly move forward up this path over the course of the year.
I can remember actually describing this to my mother when I was a child. She was horrified, thinking that I saw the future as a struggle. Actually, it’s quite neutral, but it does have a three-dimensional representation in my mind. Right down to the fact that I’m walking on grass.
I’m not sure either one of those descriptions fits. It’s not metaphor…I am actually picturing the thing in my head. But it isn’t like I think I’m REALLY seeing it or it is so vivid it seems like I could reach out and touch it, either. Although you may not be a visualizer, I’m sure you could conjur up in your mind a picture of someone you know well, like a parent or best friend…you can picture what they look like. It’s kind of like that.
This thread is very interesting to me, because I have always wondered if other people do this. Apparently not!
My year is laid out in a oval racetrack shape, with months as rectangular calendar pages. Janaury is in the upper right, and the months progress counter clockwise. Any time I think about something happening in a future month, I really do see this layout. If I think about a near future year, I just keep cycling through more ovals.
Absolutely real. I picture the layout I described as if someone had drawn it on a piece of white paper and I’m looking at it. Like Sarahfeena said, it’s not 100% sharp and defined, but I’m definitely “seeing” it when I think about the year.
My visualization of the year is actually quite similar to a clock. July is at the top, October at three o’clock, January at the bottom, and April at nine o’clock. And then, of course, time travels on in an orderly, clockwise fashion.
And, no, this isn’t really a metaphor. This is absolutely how I imagine the year. Everytime I try to remember a date, I picture the clock. December is a little to the right of January and above it, June is nearly at the top, etc.
