Here’s the planning calendar I use

The very first thing I do at the top of every planning period: make a master calendar in Google Docs.

I usually make one big calendar with all the dates and holidays as a template, then duplicate the template over and over again throughout the year whenever I need to plan something over multiple days.

This is what my 2023 calendar template looks like:

Since I’ve already made it, I’m sharing it here in case you could use it. Click the link and select File → Make a Copy to save it to your own Google Drive.

I have an eccentric way of putting together things like this. You’ll see that on my calendars, I number the weeks in the left column (if you don’t need that, scroll to the bottom of the doc to find a version with that column removed). I need to keep up with an odd mix of holidays, including heritage/history months (which affect my programming decisions), a few major sporting events (same reason), religious holidays (especially fasting holidays, which affects observant students), and, of course, Mardi Gras, which we celebrate here. In general, the date format I prefer is “Day-of-the-week M/D” with a three-letter day abbreviation, like this: “Thu 6/14.”

Here’s the link to the calendar one more time. I did this by hand, so if you notice any mistakes, let me know and I’ll update the file. Have fun, be safe, & to those who celebrate, happy inboxing day: