I’m sure you know those desk calendars with one sheet per day that have the number and month of the day (and related astronomical information) on the front and some joke, cartoon, bit of trivia or whatever on the back. How exactly are they supposed to be used?
Do I tear off (and read) each day’s sheet on the morning of that day? Then the calendar will show the wrong date for the rest of the day.
Or do I tear off (and read) the previous day’s sheet every day? Then I have a delay in reading a story that relates to the day on whose sheet it is printed, e.g. where the back of the sheet commemorates an anniversary occurring on that date.
Or do I read each day’s sheet (front and back) every morning but tear it off the next day? Then I’ll have to revisit each sheet twice.
Or do I read and tear off every sheet in the evening? That collides with the fact that most people seem to make these calendars a morning routine.
First off, I have never seen a tear off calendar with printing on both sides.
Second, tearing off yesterday’s page isn’t a big imposition. Why would I resent doing that? If anything, tearing off a day that I’ve already read to get to a new day is the fun part of a tear off calendar.
Well, the sheet might give me a bit of trivia that relates specifically to the day it is printed on, such as commemorating an anniversary or a famous person’s birthday. If I read it on the next day, that connection (“On this day in 1791…”) is kind of lost.
As to calendars that have printing on both sides of the sheet: Maybe it’s a cultural thing. They’re very common where I live. Not for one-week-per-page or one-month-per-page calendars, but certainly for those that have a sheet for each day (or possibly two days, on a weekend).
You should set yourself a daily reminder at five minutes to midnight to go to your desk and prepare for the tear. As the minutes count down, breathe and relax and clear your mind. At twenty seconds to midnight, take careful hold of the corner of the top sheet between thumb and forefinger of your dominant hand. Keep your arm and shoulder relaxed as you visualize yourself tearing the sheet away. At precisely the moment of midnight, turn your wrist and snap your forearm upward in a quick, firm, decisive motion.
At your discretion, you may employ a team of independent arbiters to observe your action and verify that the tear occurred at the proper time. Be sure to specify in advance the window of tolerance for this evaluation, expressed in hundredths of a second. They may wish from time to time to use photographic equipment to capture the moment and calibrate their personal observation, but this level of precision should not be required for every single tear.
With the sheet now safely removed and the calendar fully aligned to the date, you now have the choice of enjoying the newly exposed content on the spot, or of retiring to your bedroom and sleeping in peace and comfort, knowing that the calendar awaits your attention upon your awaking in the morning.
How you dispose of the now extraneous sheet is entirely up to you.
There is no tool so simple that somebody can’t figure out a way to misuse it.
When you first look at the calendar in the morning, tear off any now-past days and revel in the wit and wisdom chosen for you today. Then leave that page exposed so you’re reminded what day it is, and can admire that pic or saying or whatever all day long. Lather rinse repeat tomorrow.
Presumably one has done the due diligence to secure ISAE-qualified and/or ISO-certified observation. It would be overkill to take on the responsibility of certifying the professionalism of one’s observers for such a task; one can rely on outside certification, I would think. Of course, if one chooses to test one’s examiners oneself, I won’t stand in the way. On the other hand, if one elects not to validate the qualifications of the observation team, that is also a choice, but one must then face the hazard of a misaligned device.
As a risk assessment specialist, my role is not to demand any specific action, but merely to analyze potential consequences for the process owner to consider and incorporate, or not, at his or her discretion.
In the US, I think the most prominent publisher of those daily tear-off calendars is Page-A-Day.
As far as I’ve seen, their calendars’ pages have the “meat”—the joke or cartoon or whatever—on the front of each day’s page, although there may be something printed on the back. If that something is the answer to a trivia question or puzzle, you don’t want to see it immediately, so that’s a feature, not a bug.
You leaf through the calendar laughing at each of the Far Side panels, then put it on the shelf for future use, possibly tearing out the sheet of a really good one to stick on the wall somewhere, and then you use the calendar on your phone, computer, or other electronic device because it’s 2024.
In my case, I notice I haven’t done anything with the desk calendar in weeks, because (as @TriPolar says) calendars are on-screen, not on-desk.
Then I tear off a thick sheaf of the days I missed, read through them quickly, and shove the torn-off pages back into the box the calendar originally came in, because I may want to look at them again or dig them out for specific use.
And then years later, throw away the box full of torn-off calendar pages (along with the other years’ filled-up boxes) cluttering up a desk drawer, because keeping those calendar pages was just dumb.
At last I have found my soul mate! My brother used to regularly give me one of those whatever-a-day things, which I would dutifully hang and then ignore until someone would laughingly point out I was two months behind.
Somehow, they just never meshed with the way I interact with time, I guess. At work my computer screen included a prominent display of the date and time unless I had some other full screen program actively in use. Elsewhere what mattered to me was mostly What day of the week is this? I did certain tasks on a weekly schedule, I had clubs that regularly met on Tuesday, say, or we always went to the movies on Thursday, Sunday I paid any bills. There was nothing in my life that was tied to a particular date of the month.
Oh, we also have a large utilitarian month per page calendar with large write-in squares to write reminders about non-recurring planned events like parties or appointments or concerts, etc. without any cute cat of the month or pretty landscape shot or whatever.
But day of the month? Unless it’s a holiday, or I’m writing out a check, I mostly don’t care or know. It appears today is the (checks bottom right corner of the screen) the 27th, so what? It could be the 26th or 29th, it makes no difference to me. I will carry on with my Wednesday routine.
Hmmm?
“Thank you for the nice, cute kittens once-a-day calendar, in the nice plastic thing, Love-it!
You’re so smart to think I’d care what days it is, Really!”
(They gone? Hey kids Nana’s got nice kitties for you to play cut and glue with)