“If it ain’t scheduled, it ain’t real.”
Or something like that.
This tip is a guiding light since I started working on improving my personal productivity two years ago.
I followed Marie Forleo of Marie TV and can never forget the lightbulb moment I had when she advised to schedule everything onto my calendar. I’ve since kept Google Calendar, my planner, and a paper calendar close with me so I won’t forget what needs to get done.
Keeping paper calendars gave me the satisfaction of crossing days off and marking upcoming events. It didn’t, however, give me the flexibility I needed when I made a mistake or had to move an event to an earlier or later date.
The paper calendar I was using was your typical promotional calendar that didn’t inspire or appeal aesthetically. It’s purely functional and limited where I could only cross days out or encircle important dates.
The last calendar I’ll ever need
When I discovered the SuperYR Calendar by SUPERGRAPH on Kickstarter last year, this was the first pain point addressed in their campaign video.
I love the idea of a sturdy double-sided calendar I can tack onto any wall or desk. I like that I can use dry erase markers to plan, write, and erase events throughout the year. I get to save money on paper and still keep track of my day-to-day tasks.
After almost 6 months of waiting, I finally got my SuperYR calendar in the mail. Taking time to use and experience the product before sitting down to write, I highlighted the good and the not-so-good that can be improved if SUPERGRAPH decides to create a version 2 in the future.
#1: Design
SuperYR’s design gets a huge thumbs-up. The front and back dry erase layers allow you to easily write and erase, while the vinyl print and rubber core keeps it tear-resistant and waterproof.
I love the dotted lines and the font choice as well. While this isn’t a huge deal for others, this is important for me because the font impacts my drive to use the product. If something is too masculine or feminine, it’s speaks about and to my identity as a person.
My writing’s shit when I need to write against the wall.
What I’m not a fan of is how small the day boxes are. Words need to be squished to fit inside the box, and there’s not enough room for two or more events happening on that day. This makes the calendar virtually useless to me UNLESS the idea was to mimic paper calendars where you’d simply cross out the days gone by.
This leads me to my next gripe about the SuperYR:
#2: The calendar is sliced into three parts
The campaign ended after 30 days, but it took the team a couple of months to ship the calendar due to issues with packaging. I completely lost track of the product updates, and was surprised to see my calendar sliced into three parts.
This is a photo of the version advertised when the campaign started.
Photo credits to SUPERGRAPH
The calendar sliced in three parts
The calendar when displayed vertically.
I scrolled quickly through the Kickstarter page and this is their explanation:
We initially planned with enough units, SuperYR would ship as one obnoxiously big rolled sheet. But we are finding, the non-standard size adds a huge premium at each step of the fulfillment process. Shipping and handling excess air is very expensive at any quantity. To meet these challenges, SuperYR has been redesigned and will come as three sheets that combine to create a larger whole.
It took me a while to accept this since I was too careless not to have noticed this change. I generally dislike this direction as it became difficult to mount and was a pain to look at because of how the lower half of the sheet would flap and hang loosely.
#3: Undated: SuperYR’s saving grace
I won’t totally discard this calendar because of its undated format. It’s a small consolation, but important nonetheless because I can use this for many years to come. That’s a huge factor and one of the main reasons why I backed the project.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BW6jrYynCO5/?taken-by=diwadaily
I hung my SuperYR calendar horizontally where sits on top of my new workspace. I started filling in August and will continue using it till the end of the year.
If SUPERGRAPH plans on updating the SuperYR, I hope they’ll consider a different approach that more or less matches their original idea for the calendar. It was this vision of an “obnoxiously big, dry erase, magnetic, any year calendar” that drew people to support this project, so I hope development won’t stop with what they’ve produced so far.
Resources:
Leave a Reply