The Deconstructed Diary (Month)

STEP 2: Month

I had a real need for something to track one-off events. When did public holidays happen? When were people's birthdays? When were doctor's appointments? The second essential step to my deconstructed diary was the month.

I put all the dates for the year into a table for myself and printed off a couple of A4 sheets of paper. I do know that this was largely unnecessary, and I could have bought a planner that already listed all the days for 2020. As I've said, I just have a preference for constructing my own systems from scratch:

Doing it myself allowed me to slot in dates that were important to me. I don't really care about the lunar cycle or celebrities birthdays. They aren't a big deal in my life. What I do care about it is university times. I was able to type all of that into the plan.

I've been surprised by just how many times I've pulled the month sheet out. People keep asking things like:

• Are you free on the 26th?
• What university week is the 15th?
• When's census date?

In response, I can simply pull out my monthly plan and tell them. Who knew?