It’s that time of year when our thoughts turn to… calendars!

I still find paper calendars to be immensely useful. It’s far easier to glance at a wall calendar—to figure out which day of the week some future date lands upon, for example—rather than disrupt my current task with several clicks into a software program. I also like to plan my trips and various projects with different scratch calendars that I can easily make a mess of, recycle, and try again.

Most of us use computer-based organizers these days, tracking our meetings and tasks in programs like MS Outlook, Apple iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes (God help you!), and so on. These programs all have “Print” functions, of course, but their output is often cluttered and unhelpful.

If you’re a weirdo like me and like to print out lots of pristine calendars for planning/scratch/whatever purposes, check out these free online PDF calendars:

• Monthly Calendars
• Annual Calendars

You can get PDFs for up 8 predefined sizes—or enter a HUGE custom size—and there’s an option to start each week on either Sunday or Monday.

The same site also has some other neat freebies, including a wide variety of different graph and grid paper as printable PDFs:

The phone in my office, just
above my paper calendars

• Engineer’s Paper
• Accounting Ledger Paper
• Storyboards
• Music notation staves

I know, I know: Get with the program, Chris! We live in a paperless world! Well, until I’m sitting at a workstation with two 50″ monitors mounted above a 120″ touchscreen desk surface, I’m going to keep using paper to help me harness my thoughts and improve my productivity.