What is a content calendar

A content calendar is the view of what gets published, on what day, and what state each thing is in. It exists so you decide once instead of every morning.

A content calendar is one question answered ahead of time: what goes out this week. Everything due to be published has a date, a subject and a state — whether it is written, whether someone looked at it, whether it already went out.

What it solves is not the order, it is when you decide. Without a calendar, the decision of what to publish lands on the day you have to publish, which is the worst possible moment: less time, fewer ideas, and a better chance of putting out anything at all rather than leaving the day empty. With a calendar, that decision got made on another day, with the whole week in view.

Its second job is variety. Repeated subjects are invisible when you write one a day; they show up when you look at seven together. A calendar puts them side by side and the problem shows itself.

In Piecerun the calendar is the screen where pieces live with their date and their state, and it is also where you see what waited on an approval and who gave it.