2019 Actions Calendar

2019 Calendar Header

This is my third attempt at the Calendar. It’s an actions tracking calendar. I want to do this thing multiple times a year. Creating a habit. Recording progress. Print it out or use it on your iPad. There is space at the very top to write what it is you’re tracking this year. Use multiple calendars to track a couple of things. Put a big glorious ‘x’ right in the middle of that square. Enjoy that ‘x’ then come again tomorrow for some more.

The whole year lays ahead of you.

Download Calendar

New Features for 2019

Every year I seem to tweak the design every so slightly. This year is no different.

Locking and Unlocking

I found out about this wonderful Kurt Vonnegut theory and idea from Austin Kleon, who reminded me again about it a month ago. Here is the full passage in which Vonnegut describes his theory of locking and unlocking. The original passage is from a collection of essays and speeches, Palm Sunday: Bits of the Collage (1981):

“One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on.

Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves? Next comes the season called Locking. November and December aren’t winter. They’re Locking. Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold!

What comes next? Not spring. ‘Unlocking’ comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They’re Unlocking.”
— Kurt Vonnegut

I’ve decided to include these 6 seasonal references in the 2019 design.

Science

As I’ve included something whimsical above, I thought I’d counter it with something scientific as well. There are four subtle markings to remind you of where we are relative to the sun.

  1. March Equinox - Start of spring or autumn (depending on hemisphere)
  2. June Solstice - Most sunlight
  3. September Equinox - End of summer or winter (depending on hemisphere).
  4. December Solstice - Least sunlight