I imagine that each month has a certain color, and all strung together, they form a giant ring. I think I got the colors from the early elementary school calendar posters (complete with animated smiling faces, etc.). For the most part, they make sense in relation to the weather and/or holidays at that time of year. See my colors here:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc295/terran80/months.jpg

Curious…is there a reason that your elementary school arranged the months in that structure?

i don’t know about an image. more or less, i usually have to think of them in terms of numbers (9= september,3 = march, etc.) in order to remember them (or in order from Jan -> Dec).

On the scale of years, I picture time as a ramp going up at 45 degrees. Decades or centuries are color-coded, depending on my “zoom level.”

On the scale of months, the ramp turns into a spiral:

http://keacher.com/~saundegb/upload/month-spiral.png

On the scale of days, the line of the big spiral turns into a smaller, horizonal spiral with 8am for each day at the top.

I’ve always visualize it as a clock. January is at 12:01, and so on. New Year’s Eve’s midnight is actual midnight. I’m intrigued by other people’s images of the calendar.

A pie chart with 12 points…we “change spaces” once a month going around in a clockwise circle. Like a board game!

I also visualize the months of the year as colored spaces, though mine are arranged in a horizontally elongated oval, with December at the top. Also, the months run counter clock-wise, though when I visualize the days of the week I see them in clockwise order.

I visualize them in terms of numbers (1-12 (with Jan being 1)) and from right to left … not sure why that direction. I never thought of it until now.

I visualize them in circle having December at bottom, time flows clockwise. I was affected by elementary school too.

I think of it as a 3×4 matrix or grid with Jan, Feb, and Mar as row 1 Apr, May, and June as row 2 and so on. You would read it just like we read English and its organized in a simple rectangle.

I don’t have a strong mental image of MONTHS within a given year. But I do visualize YEARS somewhat like the initial example of months.
.
.
.

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
                                      60
                                      61
                                      ...
                                      69
                                      70 71 ... 78 79
                                                       80
                                                       81
                                                       ...
                                                       99
                                                       00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

This mental image lays itself out horizontally, with a regular array of past decades approaching me from my front, and future years stretching off to my right. I can’t really account for why the decades zig zag (or for why the 80s-to-90s don’t zig zag).

(^ unfortunately WordPress did not format the years the same way I typed them into the comment box. You have to visualize a right angle corner at 59-60, 69-70, 79-80, and 99-00, so that you get stairsteps heading off to the right.)

Imagine your boxes, however January with the following months stacked on top up to August. September is the box directly to the left of August and the preceeding months then go straight down to December and then then for the new year I jump back to the right and start with Jan at the bottom again. I realize that it’s not symmetrical (6 up and 6 down) but in my mind it sort of works out symmetrically. I think I lump January – August together because January begins a new year and before you know it it’s Spring and then Summer – September marks the end of Summer and beginning of school, October, November and December mark the beginning of fall and the holiday season. Make sense?

Imagine your boxes, with January starting at the bottom with the following months stacked on top up to August. September is the box directly to the left of August and the following months then go straight down to December and then for the new year I jump back to the right and start with Jan at the bottom again. I realize that it’s not symmetrical (6 up and 6 down) but in my mind it sort of works out symmetrically. I think I have January – August on one side going up because January begins a new year and before you know it it’s Spring and then Summer – September marks the end of Summer and beginning of school, October, November and December mark the beginning of fall/winter and the holiday season end of year. Make sense now?

The months of the year are arranged in a teardrop form with the top of the drop being: Jan on the left and Dec on the right side- the imagined place where these two months converge is New Year’s Eve.The bottom of the drop is rather flattened- these are the summer monts: June, July , August

I have visualized the months of the year like this for as long as I can remember:

Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug
                                   Sep
                                   Oct 
                                   Nov
                                   Dec

For some reason at the Fall Season I start a downward decent that stops at the new
year and starts over again. I would not be surprised if this was a calendar arrangement in one of my early school years.

It wasn’t until just recently that I asked myself: “What’s with the decent at Fall?”
Did a Google search and here I am. It’s good to know I’m not the only one that thought about it.

A posting preview would have helped prevent this, but the website removed by spaces so I will try again using hyphens:

Jan---Feb---Mar---Apr---May---Jun---Jul---Aug
---------------------------------------------Sep
---------------------------------------------Oct
---------------------------------------------Nov
---------------------------------------------Dec

It’s a straight line left to right until the fall and then I visualize the decent. Very strange. Like I said before it’s been like this for as long as I can remember.

I visualize the months of the year in a circle, more of a clock face. That is what my 1st grade teacher had on the bulletin board. She took a large clock face, then arranged the months of the year starting with January out from the 1:00 position. Feb. the 2:00 position and so on with Dec. in the 12:00 position. It also teaches what month is the 1st month and so on. December is the 12th month of the year.

My vision of a year goes in a counter clockwise circle with January being in the area of 1 o’clock.

In terms of how I visualize the years, they line up just like the sidewalks of my childhood home. From 1900 to 1960 the line-up comes down the east sidewalk; 1960 begins on the north sidewalk (the longest walk) and ends with 1999; For 2000 it turned right and it’s now going north down another short sidewalk – short I guess because this is where it will end.

I enjoy everyone’s concept of these topics. Thank you all for sharing. FINALLY I discover in my 54 years, I’m NOT nuts!!

My vision of a year is made up of what appear to be rather big calendar pages, one per month. January is up a bit and to the right, and they come down and toward me such that I’m closest to June. They continue with July through December swinging away and up to the left. They aren’t really “connected” to each other except that they are all oriented such that if I stood at the end of December they’d all be “right side up” in a long column. But I can’t really “go” to that end of the thing; I can only move about in the first few months of the year. Somehow I have no trouble “connecting” New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day, even though these two “points” are never close to each other. I can sort of move myself around, though–I can get right up close to January and see it right at my feet, so to speak. Or I can move over to the left and get a little closer to October, November, and December. I see the pages of January through May pretty much like calendar pages wherever I “stand”–e.g. January is “right side up” with 31 days arranged in rows like a real calendar, if I am standing “between” it and February. But I can’t get “below” June physically. I can look at June from above or from the side, though. But from June on, the calendar pages don’t look like calendar pages if I am looking at the days they contain. For these 7 months, I’m standing “near” the first of the month, whatever month I’m considering, and the days from the first through the 20th stretch in a straight line to the left and away from me, and then there is a 90 degree turn and the 20th through the 30th or 31st head off toward the right. Again, the 31st is never “connected” to the first of the next month. (My “number line” is like this, too–zero is close to me and it’s a straight line of numerals to 20 and then a hook from 20 to 100. Where I put the decimal point depends on what I’m doing thereafter. For example, the year 1000 is halfway up the line to the year 1900 but this point is also the year 1920, and then I jam up to the right to the year 2000, and then to the left to 2010, and at 2020 I’ll turn right again. At that point, the following years could be 2021, 2022, etc. or they could be 2100, 2200, 2300 depending on what i’m thinking about. The corners, however, are always at 20 and 100. The negative numbers go off to the right in a similar way.

I vision the months counter clock-wise with Jan going from 12 to 11, feb from 11-10, mar from 10 to 9 and so on. I have no idea why I see it this way in my head. I’m guessing it is from elementary school also.

I find this fascinating, and have had this conversation several times with different people, usually different answers most of the time. Has anyone discovered the thought process behind it all,ie; why some with color differentiation, some clockwise some counterclockwise, etc.? I would love to know if the psycologists have figured these things out.

I see it the same way as Laurie, a counter-clockwise circle with Jan at the top 12-1, Feb 11-10, Mar etc. But I see July and Agust taking up the bottom of the circle, it is almost flat at the bottom.

I see the months similar to others – counter clockwise. Oddly, Jan- Jun runs shorter, from the 12 to the 7, with the summer months a little larger and the fall months the largest. This image has been with me since early elementary grades in the mid 60s.

The months appear to me as an oval with winter and summer months taking up most of the area and spring and fall being on the shorter more curved sides. they run counter clockwise and I view the current month from the center of the oval. Years appear in a gradual counter clockwise ascending spiral with one exception being around 1960 through mid 1970’s the spiral starts to turn clockwise. By 1979 the spiral conforms back to the counter clockwise path. I have asked several people about visualizing years and they have told me they dont. I’m glad to find that other people do. I’m intriqued as to where this visualization came from. I believe it is totaly fabricated by me and not influenced by seeing it elsewhere.

I’m certainly way late to this discussion but I just saw this discussion. For many years I’ve wondered about the way I visualize days of the week, numbers, centuries, months of the year, etc. and in the past have taken informal polls–most people I believe just thought I was wierd or something. So I happened to “google” some key words and found this discussion. days of the week—mon-fri in a straight line and then sat and sun go up and then m-f off to the right in a straight line again; numbers–stairstepping again, up to 9 then to the right to 11 or 12 and then up to 20–straight up to 100 and then off to the right to 1000 and then up to 100,000 and then to the right again to 1,000,000 and on and on; centuries, start at about the year 1, then straight down through the middle ages to around 1066, then to the right up to the present–it sort of depends on what I’m thinking about–for example, if I’m at 1776, then it goes up to 1800 and then off to the right to the 20th century, etc; months are in a circle with jan at 1 pm, the summer months “flatten out” so it’s not exactly a circle and the up and december is at noon–whew, this sounds all to complicated as I try to describe it but it’s great to know that some others out there have some similar and dissimilar visualization schemes–but still some visualization nevertheless!

this is called syesthesia@Adam P