Put those dates in now

How to keep from dropping the ball

My 9-year-old recently decided he wanted to be part of an “ambassador” program at his school. As a fourth grader, he could help lead programs for the younger kids. It’s all very cute, and we filled out the application and he was accepted. I noted when the first meeting was on my calendar, and there was a sheet of paper with the other dates but…

You can guess what happened. That sheet of paper is no where to be found.

Fortunately, my son took notes at the first meeting (!), and wrote down the future meeting dates on a piece of paper (which he taped to his door). So I quickly took a picture and got the dates into my calendar. But it was a reminder — there’s never going to be a better time to record future dates than when you see them the first time. So get those dates down now.

Future calendars

For instance, if you have school-aged kids, there is a reasonable chance their district has published a calendar for 2025-2026 already. If so, as you’re doing your Friday planning today, take a moment to print up or save a copy. Put the major dates in. Even if you can’t yet ask for a week in April 2026 off, knowing that’s when spring break is will keep you from putting something non-critical but hard to move in that slot.

Or perhaps you are involved in a community organization. Their major dates might be available for the next few months on the website. My church choir’s performances have been set since August, but somehow I neglected to put the spring dates on my calendar until recently. Go figure! I also didn’t have all the future robotics tournaments on my calendar. Thankfully I figured out when the state and national tech competitions are, because we need to schedule our summer breaks around those. If your family members might be going to something similar…get it down.

You’ll forget

Now, to be sure, you probably don’t have to put everything on the calendar. I tend not to record stuff that happens every week. The 9-year-old has parkour every Tuesday at 7:15 p.m., so I only put the first or last class of the semester on my calendar, and just assume the rest unless otherwise noted.

But a lot of stuff is more irregular. That ambassador program meets once a month, which is almost impossible to remember because the usual cues (oh, it’s Wednesday!) aren’t there. Same with stuff that happens every 2-3 weeks, or once a term.

So don’t rely on remembering. If the dates are available, take a little time as part of your planning or batch processing to record them. Come late March when you realize your kids have a random day off school, you’ll be happy you figured this out, rather than getting completely blindsided.