Man, I've never even considered imagining the year as a circle. It's always been linear for me (with future and past years connected to it on either end). I do imagine cycles over the linear model, but these appear more like overlapping sine waves than circles.
For me, time is linear, too, but there are no cycles. I visualize it as an infinite number line [0].
That's how I also visualize numbers as well - always as notches on a number line. Whenever someone mentions a number, I immediately picture it there. It helps with comparisons and subtractions because I can immediately see the distance between values.
Exactly, me too! I'm wondering if people who see it as a circle give more importance to NYE as they would view it as the beginning of a new cycle? I surely don't care about NYE (and other reccurent dates such as holidays, birthdays, ...) as it's just another point on the infinite line.
I was born in Germany, where the country shuts down between Christmas to New Year, and so it makes a natural cut in the year. (Though when I was in school, the summer holidays were more important as a divider.)
In my adopted home of Singapore, instead Chinese New Year is really important. But because of a lack of clear seasons, there is much less of a natural year-long structure to time. (Interestingly, the school year here aligns with the calendar year.)
Interesting! It turns out my wife also has a helix representation in her head, with the future going downward and counter-clockwise. I never suspected there'd be so much variation here and I guess always assumed most people just saw it my way.
I wonder if you made a dating app that asked these sorts of questions ("what shape is a year?", "can you read a book while counting?", etc) if the answers would be a relevant factor for determining compatibility.
In James Gurney's Dinotopia, humanity is described as imagining time as a line, whereas dinosaurs imagine it as a circle. They compromise and teach a single cohesive theory of "time as a helix" to both saurian and simian children.
The reasoning is that it closest matches reality, "cyclically rotating around the sun and moving with the seasons, as well as forever propelling ourselves forward into the future with permanent changes".
There's a romance to it that I've always adored, as well as dammit it just makes SENSE
My reaction was the same. Honestly I hadn’t even thought about it until I started reading the article… I too would say it is linear for me. The circle I can get, but some of the weirder ones, I wonder if people answering this survey were just making it up for the fun of it.
Back in my school days, when I was around 7 years old, one of the most vivid memories that stick with me is of a vertical timeline displayed across the entire width of our classroom's back wall.
It started with September on the left, and it ended with August on the right.
To this day, whenever I think of a year, I picture it like that timeline.
For me it’s like a nice slide into the warmer
months, and a less pleasant climb into the colder months. And you see the next year after the peak, the turn of the year bringing a new perspective of sorts.
This is interesting. I never anticipated so many people would think of it as a circle. I mentally picture a calendar we had in my kindergarten classroom. It was a regular (USian, with the start of the week on Sunday) wall calendar, but all the pages had been cut out and hung in a line with January at the ceiling and December just above the floor.
Relatedly, I've recently put a line in my .bashrc to display the ISO week number (date +%V) in addition to the traditional date. Knowing that we're in week 42 of the year somehow helps me get a better sense time passing than knowing it is the third Wednesday in October. In general I think the world lives in weeks rather than months and it's a little unfortunate that our date system obscures this.
In Germany some people might ask "Hey, let's meet up on calendar week 42", but I then always have to quickly google "when is week 42". I think people who are in the office a lot and have management meetings will know these weeks better.
But only very recently a couple of friends of mine mis-communicated because they had a different week in mind ("so how about we meet this Wednesday?" - "I thought you wrote calendar week 33, not 32, I'm away on seminar all week.")
I much prefer "Hey, let's meet up on the week of November 6th" (the date being the Monday of the week).
In the Netherlands I think it's common to think like that in larger organizations, and so people who work there sometimes talk like that in private too.
I kept waiting for the article to get to early school exposure to months of the year, and was disappointed until I read your comment.
Indeed, I've been aware for many years that my spatial visualization of the year was formed in kindergarten, from the board that had a ring of 12 laminated paper cupcakes, each with the names of the kids in class born in that month. December was at the 3:00 position, thus permanently wiring it there in my brain.
All that said, my mind somehow added a dimension over time, turning the loop into a sort of loose helix with the past below (and intermittently attached to corresponding real-world time-places like classrooms or offices) and the future somewhere above.
I've discussed this with numerous different friends and colleagues over the years, and then most see time as linear if not quantified but very different when you start asking of periods. So many see years as cyclical, and understandably hours as well. Weeks are often tabular as your year is.
One of the more interesting visualizations of the year was a colleague who saw it as a coil, so cyclic but also with a forward motion.
Seasons are also interesting: my seasons are wedges of the cyclic year, but som I've discussed this with have the seasons removed from their representation of the year and have seasons tabular instead.
I'm surprised so many people think of it as a circle too. I guess it makes sense, since it's a cycle, and we already use a circle for clocks. But it never occurred to me. In my head it's a straight line with notches, like a ruler, with another ruler at each end for the next and previous years.
Fwiw I think of the year in much the same way as a clock face.. the 12 months and 12 hours thing essentially matches somewhat 1 to 1 for me. So circle representation is what follows. Im actually surprised in the variations too.
I started tracking the weeks like that a long time ago when I was working a job that paid weekly. It's kind of like a super power for making accurate time estimates, I've found.
I have lived in America all my life and have never even once heard somebody talk about a week number. The only exception I know of is that electronics geeks sometimes know about the concept because often electronic components have a date code that is the year and week of their manufacture. This is where I got the idea anyway. So, if there is a US standard, most Americans are not aware of it -- even electronics geeks would only bring it up when actively decoding some markings on a suspicious chip.
This is quite a common measure in business, especially in project management. Including in the US, from my experience with a dozen or so large US companies I worked for or with.
It is granular enough (~52 weeks) to give good (rough) estimations and is is not difficult to manage (compared to 365 days for instance)
Yes, it is a real difference that bit me a few times when I forgot about the 1 week difference. The worst is that this week of difference is present or not depending on the years.
The second nightmare is the week iof difference in daylight saving time (in Europe we switch a week earlier or later vs the US, I do not remember anymore)
If someone told me to visualize a year on a circle, I’d probably go with the default watch format, but the thing is, I don’t see the year as anything. Lots of interesting responses from people who see it as a circle, oval, flattened or on a mountainside, I just don’t see “a year” at all. I’m a person with vivid 3D imagination and good spatial reasoning, but I haven’t developed a spatial model of a year at all.
For me, when comparing or estimating timescales, months are numbers in a range, and I mean numbers, not points on a line. When deciding whether to do something in February or June or October, there are significant memories, colors, smells and pictures associated with each, but again, no spatial model.
Maybe you live closer to the equator than the Norwegians in that post? The farther north you live the more the year will become a thing on it's own, because the months feel very different due to the length of the days changing.
I am not saying that this necessarily must lead to geometric metaphors, but if you are somewhere where "a day" looks more or less the same independent of the season it makes more sense to tie to your own experience
I can imagine the year as a circle, since we’ve had circles like that in school.
But there’s not generally any figure that pops into my head when I think about it.
I can relate to the complicated pictures some have though. It feels like different parts of the year have different sizes and angles to them, so could probably draw a shape that feels right to me
Same here, I think? Months to me are just numbers. Even remembering the order of them was hard. I think I'm just barely starting to get the hang of it now
I don't know if I had a layout in mind beforehand, but upon thinking about it for a bit can settle on one that I like. I would generally prefer to have spring/summer/fall being more prominent than winter. This is historically accurate as we didn't even have timekeeping or month names for winter until later. Despite the calendar beginning in Jan, my natural year mentally begins in spring. I debated clockwise/anticlockwise as one follows a clock and the other geometry. In the end I like this best flows left->right from spring to fall (like sunrise to sunset) and has summer up top (like high noon) and winter bottom (with lowest temps).
Summer
Spring Fall
Winter
Now I didn't put month names here, but being in the northern hemisphere is easy to place.
Yes, his question assumes an answer. Sure, I can force the year onto a circle, but that's not how I think of it. He really should not have assumed a circle in the first place if he wanted to know what people really think.
Related, there are people who visualize the past in front of them and the future behind. Because, you already know the past, so you can see it and the future you don't know, so you can't see it.
As for the year, I'm imagining a circle, but with January / December at the bottom. It may have something to do with how the plants are "in the ground".
This is such a great question. I’ve come to realize that my internal “year” is a very funky circle, stretched and melted in some places. It’s flat on the bottom, and rotates clockwise. Anticlockwise is bananas to me, but fair enough, it is the positive direction on a graph.
I like these questions of internal representation. Like “what color is Wednesday?” Yellow, obviously, but I suspect disagreement.
Mine looks like an annual calendar. A grid 3 wide and 4 down. Each box is a month. January is top-left, and December bottom-right. Each row is a quarter and starts with January, April, July, and October, respectively.
If I had to pick a shape, it would be a zig-zag.
No doubt that this is influenced by wall calendars.
I'm surprised that there weren't any sinusoidal representations mentioned.
Scandinavians traditionally celebrate both the summer and winter solstices, and the change in light over the course of the year is dramatic at that latitude. To me, that would best be illustrated with a sine wave.
I thought the author asked how you would visualize it as a circle. For me it’s an oblique rectangle.
The integers up to a few thousand (and the big multiples like thousand, million, lakh etc) have a definite shape to me. I remember trying to draw it as a kid (rather unsuccessfully). But when doing simple arithmetic (including simple rationals) I simply look up the answer. My college roommate was interested and observed that I literally flick my eyes around to find the answer. Learning the times tables always seemed like a weird idea — I just answered the questions when asked.
I love this question-- my "normal" view is a circle with December on the right (3 o'clock), and the year going counter-clockwise. I have some vague memory of a calendar laid out in this way, and it's colored my mental image ever since.
Another cool thing I've noticed is that my visual perspective of the year shifts with the year. During the first quarter, I view the circle from outside the Q1 portion of the ring with the distinct understanding that I'm viewing it "upside down". And as the months go by, so does my position in the circle and my perspective on the rest of the year.
I can’t say that it has ever occurred to me to visualize the year as anything at all, and very surprised to learn that it’s apparently a very common (or near universal?) thing to do. I don’t really understand the concept.
It's not something that should occur to you. It's just how your brain works. Not everyone has that visual aid. And year (or time) is not the only thing where it's applied. I have different mental visuals for all kinds of concepts. It's called visuospatial synthesis I believe.
I find it weird and a bit arrogant that the author didn't open with some explanation.
The core is that we always represent time as space.
In our mind, the past, present, and future are 3d or 2d relations. The week, a month, your lifespan all have some spatial "shape", or order at the least. I'm no expert, but I am pretty sure this is not Synesthesia like the article implies.
"My" inner year is a counter-clockwise circle. But my week is a strip, even though week loops like years. My life is a downwards strip, I guess because I'll die someday. History itself is an upward strip, because time itself will never end (presumably).
For me the year is like a ribbon...almost like a an old film reel. It's an interesting study, though. It reminds me of Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man Month:
> I have long enjoyed asking candidate programmers, "Where is next November?" If the question is too cryptic, then, "Tell me about your mental model of the calendar." The really good programmers have strong spatial senses; they usually have geometric models of time; and they quite often understand the first question without elaboration. They have highly individualistic models.
I'd never thought to visualize a year! I have a weak - not non-existent, but weak - ability to generate mental images, so it takes focus and concentration to do so. Whatever image I might create would be contaminated by these examples, so I'm not going to try it now. I will try to remember to attempt it in a few months, just out of curiosity.
I will say that long years spent in, or associated with, academia means that the start of a year is irrevocably associated with September or so. January is 'meh', but autumn is alive with fresh possibility.
The google form phrasing has a bias by using clock references which implicitly has 0/beginning at the top. It could have used a compass which is then perhaps biased east->west anticlockwise as the sun travels. It should simply have said top, bottom, top/left, etc. I also would have preferred if it asked people to place summer, winter, spring, fall which doesn't have the calendar zero of Dec/Jan.
> If the year is a circle – where’s March and December in your mind?
The question together with the visualizations of the answers assume that the circle is still, and upright.
In my mind the circle is flat on the ground, and I’m moving around it counter-clockwise. There’s no “up”. I’m always on whatever the current month is, facing inwards, seeing the past six months on my left and the next six months on my right.
Odd, I just realized for me it's sorta-linear left to right but not so much.
Jan-june is sloping down, july-august is flat (and about 1/3 of the length), september-december slope up. Next year and past year connect symmetrically in a darker shade beyond the year boundaries, I see next January and past December but not further than that.
I had never realized this was so complex in my mind.
A circle? What? I always thought of the year as a sloppy ellipsis, with a positive gradient from 01-10 and a negative gradient from 11-12. The connection to the next year isn't a solid line but a dotted one.
Also, in my imagination there is a third dimension, which means that the ellipsis doesn't connect to its starting point, but spirals upwards.
I didn't know I do actually imagine a year as a circle, but the illustration is so weird to me. Upon inspection, I imagine the year counter-clockwise with January starting at 5pm. Also, all months have colors (and these colors don't change in my mind – I knew that before).
Vaguely sinusoidal (high in summer, low in winter, continuing to the next year). The actual siusoidal ribbon is a calendar of a kind I've seen many times. This is kind of how I visualize future dates sometimes, I see them on this calendar.
- Jan to June on one row
- July, August September in a column under June
- October to December on one row, which is on the same row or next year's Jan.
Still undecided whether I consider aphantasia crippling, but reading these depictions and recognizing now that they aren't "metaphorical" does generate a certain sadness.
I don't get this. What is this thing about visualizing a concept? Do these people take hallucinogens to do this exercise? Or are they only reaching for the images of the past when they learned the concept? Is this an american thing? I don't see any image whatsoever when I think about a year. Same with democracy, time, justice or whatever. When I ask my friends, they also don't experience seeing images.
It's in English, and HN is an American website. Also Norwegian and American culture are not so distant. I'm just trying to understand because it seems like some kind of cultural phenomena, but I may be wrong. I can't visualize an year even if I take acid, visualizing concepts is just not the way my mind works. Perhaps this is some kind of art-game or something? Or are these people actually saying they see these images when they think about and use the concept of a year???
> visualizing concepts is just not the way my mind works
> are these people actually saying they see these images when they think about and use the concept of a year
I do (not a circle but definitely a visualisation I see in my head).
I don't know how reliable the data is, nor how well understood the topic is, but most studies I've seen on this do show the majority of people visually visualise concepts in their head; not universally, there's always people who don't visualise at all, but primary differences discussed in these type of results tend to be whether people's visualisations are vivid or vague or something different.
Having ridden this rollercoaster myself, it seems to vary from person to person but most of the people I know have some degree of "a", and can choose "b".
You spend some decades thinking "counting sheep" was meant figuratively; you discover that was not the case.
Firstly, this study explicitly prompted people first to visualise years as a circle, so there's no guarantee respondents do this every time - so to answer your MCQ, the answer here would most likely be (b).
However, if you were to ask whether people visualise something (be it a circle or some different visualisation) every time they have to operate the "year" concept, I suspect the answer would be (a).
TL;DR: Aphantasia likely
fwiw, Ed Catmull's Disney survey on this topic is interesting (referenced in the wiki article above)
Yeah, it seems I'm very aphantasic. Not even deliberately I can create an image of "year". But I can easily write/speak a text about the concept. Now it makes more sense: people always made fun of me when playing Dixit, because when "calling" they would use 1 or 2 short phrases at most, and I would instead declare a very long idea, concept or story lmao. They asked me to be "simpler" or "shorter", but I just wasn't able to do it. It also explains why I always lost in this game because people mostly couldn't grasp my text-based descriptions (winning was never my goal, though).
Perhaps it has to do with my bilingual upbringing: juggling with language was my main job for a longggggg time.
