Every January 1st, after we drag ourselves out of bed along with our hangovers, The Husband and I sit down and do our Yearly Calendar Day. What’s this, you may ask? It’s a special “date” we have together where we sit down with a calendar and hash out all of the important dates for the coming year. Prospects of vacations are brought up, days are blocked out for upcoming work engagements, including conferences and out of town meetings, and even family birthdays are scribbled down. With the help of modern technology, this duty has become a bit easier, and I wanted to share with you how we do it each year.
Step 1: Plug in the obvious
The easiest part of this ritual is writing down, or typing in, dates that are most obvious to you. This would be holidays, if they aren’t already annotated, and birthdays of family and friends. Since you know that celebrations will revolve around these dates, it’s best to plug them in and see where they land. This will help with later steps.
Step 2: Mark scholastic closings
If you have someone in your household that attends school, make sure to mark odd school closing days and any spring, summer and winter breaks. Most schools will have their whole 2013 schedule already up on their websites. If you are dealing with elementary and high school, you may only be able to do up to the end of this school year. That’s fine; just make a note to update once you get the new school year schedule.
Step 3: Add in work commitments
This may be easier for some rather than others, but it’s important to plug in any work engagements right off the bat before we get to the fun stuff. I had to even plug in my monthly drill dates and a 2 weeks of military duty I’ll have to do this year. If you know you have a business trip that you take every year, plug it in. Have conferences that you will be attending or intend to be a part of? Put them down. Whether these things pan out or not, they are events that are financially based, so they need to be listed properly. Plus, with business comes pleasure. And on that note…
Step 4: Search for possible vacation days
This is the fun part. Once you have all of the above written on your calendar, you can see where you have open days for fun. You can also see which birthdays land near days off or holidays and can plan trips to visit family and friends on their sacred days. You can also plan any birthday parties for those in your own home. If you work for a “brick and mortar” company, you can also see how many vacation days you will need to use for any planned trips. It may sound silly, but this is the perfect time to plan trips and let family members know that you’d like to visit them during this week in that month.
4 Easy steps and your year is planned. This is also great since you have the bones of an organized year, so if something comes up that you have to change, it won’t be hard to see what and where you’ll have to make adjustments. I hope this helps someone and if you have any questions on how to make this a bit more detailed, or even easier, leave them in the comments below and I’d be glad to help!
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I love this idea! Maybe hubby and I should sit down and do this and see how it goes! It would make life a little easier for the main things!
Great ideas! I need to do this. Calendar day sounds like a wonderful thing.
That’s a great idea! You are much more disciplined than I am!
Great tips on how to organize and plan the year ahead!! Thanks for the info!
I love this idea – but I can’t even commit myself to a hair color. We are more fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants vacationers! I think this will get easier once my girls are both in school!
Found you on SITS!
Tracy @ Momaical.com
I love calendar day! My vacation days are all planned out…. now we need to decide what to do while on vacation!
Great ideas! Super simple and easy to follow through on. Thanks for sharing! Stopping through from SITS Sharefest
Really great idea! Thanks for posting! Stopping by from SITS.
On my to-do list. I and doing 100 days of new year and there’s a day where this completely fits in.
Thanks for all the comments everyone! This really isn’t about “discipline.” Anyone can do it. It’s just dedicating an hour tops to getting done. Then you can slack off for the rest of the year.
Fantastic idea! Coming from the ad agency arena I was always used to working a year out for my clients and take this approach in my personal life too, but it’s harder to get DH on board. I think as I have more kids/they get older the idea of a big planning meeting will be good. For now it’s just me “mama planner” with my annual calendar filling in dates. I still keep a full-on paper calendar for major life events (vacation, reunions, weddings etc) in addition to the one on my smartphone.