Simone Giertz is the YouTuber who identifies herself as the person who creates things that don’t work. However, these days, she is working on a project that does work: The Every Day Calendar. The Every Day Calendar is a gold star system, with each calendar month displayed above a string of gold stars that light up when you touch them. While this calendar seems simple, it appeals to the inner need of most adults to see rewards for good behavior.
Simone Giertz: The Every Day Calendar
The gold star light up reward system is a powerful psychological tool that can help you trim your bad habits and help you complete your calendar bucket lists with less friction. Simone points out that adults don’t usually get gold stars. However, we are motivated when we feel rewarded for our own behavior, and we can do this by assigning gold stars to ourselves.
The calendar has all 12 months listed on the board, with a string of gold stars running down the board. Each gold star symbolizes a day of the year. The star can help serve as a daily reminder to take medication, sign into your emails, or other such grown-up tasks. It can even help you with your New Year resolution. If you keep your New Year resolution, you get to light the star for that day up.
Simone Giertz: Team and Design Challenge
Despite its simplicity, Simone’s team had to overcome design challenges. The board design includes a regular circuit board as the front display. The circuit board also uses capacitive touch and is translucent, thus it lights up when you touch it. The hexagon pattern for each gold star has some gold-immersed copper. The calendar itself does not connect to the Internet, so you will not need apps, wifi, or computer programs to set it up. Even if you turn it off or it loses power, the Every Day Calendar remembers the lit stars.
The team is still looking into manufacturing partners, as the circuit board needs to be at its limits in terms of size and functionality. Additionally, they are open-sourcing the schematics for the Every Day Calendar and putting a USB programming port in the back.
You can think of any small commitment to improving your life. This can be doing yoga, completing situps, or learning new words. This great reward system can even take over your Google Calendar when it comes to keeping your commitments. The difficult part is making sure that you have the motivation to do it every day.
