I remember being stumped by the same problem of wanting a better overview over periods of time, and so came up with a scrollable-zoomable-timeline visualization called LineTime (http://www.linetimeapp.com). Smooth pinch-to-zoom and it displays days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries.
At this point, LineTime isn't a productivity app but a history timeline. But actually I like this idea almost better for a productivity tool, since it enables you to "compartmentalize" a bit better than with a flowing timeline like LineTime.
This one would be tricky - it looks like this needs continuous re-scaling. This would probably need a system of movable paper parts - labels, post-its or whatever. There's a serious danger you'd spend more energy tweaking those than thinking about the actual tasks :)
A magnetic / whiteboard planning calendar might work though.
You'd have current month large, then scale down through future 3 months, remainder of year, future years. Post-its / whiteboard marker / magnetic markers for various events.
The advantage of software is of course that you can have scaled views but infinite (or at least very large) storage capacity.
Well, the other advantage of software is that you wouldn't have to re-draw your paper version of a calendar when the months change. Imagine having to move important events from the smaller "future" boxes to the now much bigger "soon" boxes.
I remember being stumped by the same problem of wanting a better overview over periods of time, and so came up with a scrollable-zoomable-timeline visualization called LineTime (http://www.linetimeapp.com). Smooth pinch-to-zoom and it displays days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries.
At this point, LineTime isn't a productivity app but a history timeline. But actually I like this idea almost better for a productivity tool, since it enables you to "compartmentalize" a bit better than with a flowing timeline like LineTime.