Do you remember what year you moved into your current house? Or when you had knee surgery? What about that big vacation you and your family took? I don’t know about you, but the longer I live, the more I struggle to remember these details. So I decided to start noting and tracking the important events in my life in one place, my life timeline. In this post, I share how to create a life timeline and why you might want one, too.
My husband and I have been sorting through old boxes in our basement, trying to figure out what to keep and what we can shred. We came across some paperwork from when we were first married more than 40 years ago. (Yeah, we’ve always had room to store boxes, so we haven’t spent time going through things for years!) My husband asked if maybe we should keep some papers to keep a record of where we lived back then.
This gave me an idea. Instead of keeping the papers, I should simply write down our former addresses in one place. (We’ve moved a lot!)
And then that started me on another jog down memory lane. When did we live in that apartment? What year did we build that house? When did we take that trip to Scotland? And something I always forget–what year did we move here to Michigan? The more of life I live, the more of the little things I forget. Things I don’t want to forget because they are part of my life story.
Now for many of these things, I can use photos to give me clues. (But that presumes my photos are all organized, which is another story for another day.) So much to remember!
Information Overload
Our brains are full of stuff. These days we consume information at an alarming rate. One source suggests that Americans consume 11.8 hours of information each day or 34 gigabytes which is about 100,000 words. That would be like reading all of To Kill A Mockingbird or half of Moby Dick. Every day.
Some of it’s useful and important to remember. Most of it’s not. Like you, I have decades of details dancing in my head from books, professors, lectures, sermons, movies, classes, travels, conversations, podcasts, YouTube videos, social media, and on and on. I’m sure your head is swimming with information just like mine.
So I started playing with how to organize some of this information on paper or digitally. Why? To help me reflect and to remember. Until writing this post, I thought that my brain was like a file cabinet. I just needed to sort through all those files and eventually I’d find the right one. But I’ve since learned that our brains are wonderful blessings, but they look more like messy desks:
By looking at brain activity during the scans, scientists are concluding that earlier notions of how memory works need to be revised. The old model of memory, says Lehrer, is that the brain was like an immense filing cabinet, where knowledge was stored in a logical order. “Now, thanks to ‘tip of the tongue’ research,” says Lehrer, “they’re realizing that it’s not like a file cabinet at all but like a very, very messy desk, cluttered with big piles of paper, so when you misplace a word or a name, what you’re trying to do is find one piece of paper amid all these billions and billions of piles of paper.”
NPR, Scientists Changing Theories about Memory
I can’t think clearly with an in-real-life messy desk, so it’s no wonder I want to bring some order to the messy desk inside my head!
Today, I just want to share how I’m organizing one part of the messy desk. My personal history. Creating a life timeline.
Why Create a Life Timeline?
- Having major dates and places recorded as a reference (some forms ask about previous addresses, for example)
- Telling your story in seasons of life, especially as a Christian, to remember the Lord’s faithfulness
- Helping you dive into a project by giving you cues (scrapbook, photo album, journal, memoir)
- Straightening a few of the messy papers on your brain-desk
How to Create a Life Timeline
#1. Gather your supplies.
What do you need? Whatever you do, keep it simple. Here are a few things you might want to use:
- If you prefer the journaling style, gather pen, pencil, and paper (here are my favorites for an enjoyable journaling experience).
- Or go digital. I’m using Apple Notes for my list because it’s handy. If I want to print it out in the future, I may do that.
There are a couple of other online resources I’ve found that could also help if you’d like to go digital.
- EdrawMind helps you capture and commemorate your life’s milestones with customizable personal life timeline templates.
- Lifely is a password protected timeline maker journal that you can download on your phone.
#2. Brainstorm your major life events.
Obvious ones are your birth, baptism, school days, confirmation, graduations, sibling births, homes and moves, camp experiences, education, sad events, job changes, marriage, children, surgeries, big vacations, grandchildren. Once you begin, you will be surprised by how many new memories surface. Don’t worry about perfection or even being in chronological order. Just jot things down. You can add to it anytime.
#3. Talk to others.
Chat with your siblings, parents, and close friends about the events. This is a great family reunion activity. You could even work together on family timelines.
#4. Brainstorm the best format.
Maybe it’s a simple list with the years on the left side and a brief description on the right. Or you may opt to create a real timeline just like you’d see in a history book. I’ve seen fabulous visual timelines with photos or sketches to illustrate each major life event. Scrapbookers or artists will have fun with this! If you are a crafting person, you might enjoy exploring this video about scrapbooking a timeline of your life.
#5. Think about where you want to store this document.
Of course, this depends on which format you use. I’m putting mine in my Apple Notes as a simple list of dates, bullet-style, with brief notes. I might create a visual one with photos at some point. You could also use a folder, a notebook, a spreadsheet… wherever you’re comfortable.
#6. Allow this to evolve over weeks or months.
Add events to the timeline until you feel you’ve captured it all.
#7. Save it.
Somewhere. Anywhere. Tell your kids about it. Print it and put it with your Very Important Documents just in case some day your great-grandkids wonder if you ever went to camp. (If you want to spend money on an heirloom, check this out.)
I hope you found this little “how to” create a life timeline helpful.
Our memories are to be cherished and shared, especially the ones which tell the story of God’s faithfulness in our lives. Scripture is filled with reminders to remember the Lord and how He has worked in His people’s lives.
“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart.”
Deuteronomy 8:2
Even if you never create a personal timeline, do one simple thing right now. Remember who you are–a beloved child of God.
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