Introducing the Everyday Calendar by Simone Giertz

The “Queen of Shitty Robots”Simone Giertz has made a career of being really good at building really bad things, and if you haven’t come across Giertz before you should stop reading here and go watch her on YouTube.

“I’m mostly known for building things that don’t work… I realise that might be the worst Kickstarter intro of all time. But, besides building useless machines, I build a lot of other things. Things that solve problems without creating a whole bunch of new ones.”

Which is where her first Kickstarter comes in, “…the first time I’ve made a real thing that people actually can buy” says Giertz, the Every Day Calendar.

The calendar started out as a private project for Giertz to keep track of her attempt to meditate daily to cope with the “weird Internet stress” of running her YouTube channel.

“…I missed one day in a year, but it was because it was I had brain surgery. But I’m not bringing up brain tumours for the sake of brain tumours, even though it’s a really classic sales pitch.”

On days you keep up your habit you get to tap on the day to light it up, and on days you don’t, you don’t. It’s there to give you a helpful nudge to keep up a daily good habits—whether that’s exercise, mediation, or writing.

“…keeping your habits is relatively easy on a good day, but it’s really difficult on a bad day. I didn’t understand how important the everyday calendar was until I got sick, I had every imaginable excuse not to meditate. I chose to stick with it. The everyday calendar kept me going in a time when I really wanted to quit.”

“It’s like getting a gold star sticker, but way less sticky.…we’re adults now, so we only get gold stars if we give them to ourselves.”

The design of the Every Day Calendar itself is intriguing. In most products the printed circuit board is hidden away, while it is the functional part of the product, you don’t interact with it directly in any way. With the calendar, the circuit board itself is the user interface.

“Really early on we realised that we wouldn’t be able to use mechanical components for it, not mechanical switches or buttons as for the earlier calendar… the cost really adds up. We decided to use capacitance touch, which alleviates the need for mechanical components…

Giertz will be open sourcing the project in time, probably at the end of the Kickstarter, so if you want to make one yourself you will be able to do that.

However if you want to get your hands on one and don’t want wait, or to build it yourself, the project is raising now on Kickstarter with the Every Day Calendar costing $250 for early birds or $300 at regular pricing. Shipping is $18 inside the United States and $38 elsewhere in the world, with the first batch of early bird calendars expected to ship in May 2019, and the rest shipping in December 2019.

Just in time for a fresh start to the new year in 2020 perhaps?