Calendars are indespensible, but every calendar I’ve seen fails to appreciate that time does not flow in discrete units. Instead, we live our lives day-to-day. The days, months, and years change, but there nothing materially different between April 30th and May 1st. It makes sense that a physical calendar would be segmented with one month on each page, but there is no reason why a digital calendar should be as well. Why not always show the next four weeks? With the traditional layout, a calendar isn’t very useful in the last week of the month, and you spend most of your time flipping between months. Instead, if we simply showed the next four weeks by default, a calendar is useful at any time. Want to go backwards? Scroll up. Want to see further into the future? Scroll down. Want to see what’s going on in July as you plan a vacation? Click July.
It’s time that calendars are freed from their stale card-based design. We need calendars that acknowlege that lives are not lived in month-goverened states, but that daily life is a constant flow of time, a near-endless stream of days. We segment them to give them order, but that order should not be taken too far. Let’s shake it up.