What This Builds
A planning space that sits upstream of your working calendar. Part idea bank, part loose schedule — a place to drop content you want to create, rough out what you're working on this week or next, and make sure you're never starting from zero when it's time to produce.
Why Build It
The working calendar shows what's happening now. The planning calendar is where you decide what happens next.
Most people skip this layer and jump straight from idea to execution — which means every week starts with a scramble to figure out what to write about, what to prioritize, and whether anything is actually ready to go. The planning calendar breaks that pattern.
Drop an idea in when you see it. A headline you want to write, a post you want to mirror, a link to research that sparked something. Then when you sit down to plan the week, you've got a deposit to pull from instead of a blank screen. Pick two articles, one social series, a newsletter angle — rough out the week, leave it there, and come back when it's time to build.
Nothing here needs to be finished or scheduled. That's the point. It's a holding space for what's coming so the working calendar only ever receives things that are actually ready to move.
What You Need
Tools
Notion, Airtable, Google Sheets, or anything with a simple list or board view. A calendar view is optional here — unlike the working calendar, the planning calendar is more about visibility into what's queued than precise dates.
Setup Level
Simple to start. The most important fields are the idea or headline, a rough content type, a link or reference if there is one, and a status that tells you whether something is just an idea, being developed, or ready to schedule.
Copy The Setup Prompt
Show the full setup prompt
I want to build a planning calendar in [Notion / Airtable / Sheets — name your tool] that works as both an idea bank and a forward-looking content plan — a place to capture ideas when I see them and rough out what I'm working on before anything hits my working calendar or production queue.
Help me design a structure with these fields:
Title or headline (what the content is or might be)
Content type (blog, email, social post, newsletter, etc.)
Status (idea / developing / ready to schedule)
Reference or link — the article, post, or research that inspired it
Notes — why this idea matters or what angle I want to take
Rough target week or timeframe (loose, not a hard publish date)
I want to be able to see this as a list or board so I can scan what's queued, move things forward when they're ready, and pull from it when I'm planning the week. Walk me through how to set this up in [tool name] and how to connect it to my working calendar or content tracker so that when something is ready to move, it flows into production without having to re-enter it.