Most people won’t forget to give gifts to the people they care for. They’ll forget to give them on time. They’ll remember a birthday three days later. They’ll get a host gift from the forecourt of the gas station. They’ll forget to write a thank you note, the window for which has long since passed and makes them feel silly for ever thinking of it in the first place. All of these are signs of a bad system for remembering to give gifts, not indifference. The right way to approach a gifting calendar, to use a tool outside of a simple calendar, is to focus on relationship tiers, not holidays, and to write plenty of notes and plenty of reminders.
Relationship tier lists instead of flat chronological lists
Instead of simply writing a list of who you’ll give a gift to, and when, try thinking of who you want to connect with. Then, group them into tiers based on the level of interest in your life. Tiers are important because most relationships are nuanced – you want to keep in touch more with some people and less with others.
Tier 1 are family and close friends – people whose news you feel most interested in hearing about, who you’d show up for in person in the case of a death. Tier 2 are extended family, close coworkers, and people you see frequently but not with any great intimacy. Tier 3 are casual friends, professional contacts, and people you’ll want to feel friendly towards but not necessarily invested in. With your tiers established, you now know how much to gift each person based on frequency and occasion. Notes to tier ones should be sent for all major events in their life, with additional notes ‘just because’ tossed in somewhere once or twice a year. Notes to tier twos should be sent for all major events, but not otherwise. For tier threes, keep it to a card or small gift at a holiday or birthday, if at all.
Anchor gifts to triggers instead of dates
What makes a gifting calendar different from a simple list of names with dates beside them is specificity. Writing down ‘March 14, Mum’s birthday’, for example, will make you feel guilty but do little to actually remind you of her birthday. By contrast, writing down ‘March 14, Mum’s birthday, order flowers by March 7, write note by March 10’, you’ve created a trigger for a sequence of events that will lead up to her birthday. You’ve told yourself to order flowers and write a note, rather than simply feeling obligated to show up with a gift.
First, identify the specific triggers you have on your calendar. Birthdays, of course, but also housewarming presents, job loss, pregnancy announcements, and holiday cards are all things people regularly anchor gifts to. You can also create your own triggers based on the types of gifts you want to give. Once you’ve identified your triggers, add thirty day ‘snooze’ reminders for any tier one and two gifts. This means an alert that goes off thirty days prior to an event so that you have sufficient time to prepare a gift, order it if necessary, and personalize it in advance. If you don’t allow yourself this buffer, you’ll always be caught off guard.
Host gifts are a strange concept and have special considerations
Host gifts are a strange concept in many ways – they’re not as important as a birthday gift, which is a personal gift, but they’re more important than a wedding gift, which is a social gift. They’re meant to show appreciation, and potentially send social signals, but they’re also meant to be ‘safe’. One thing to avoid bringing as a host gift is anything that will cause extra work for the person receiving them. This includes grocery items, special food that requires presentation, or even a cheese board that needs to be put together.
The same goes for social signals – the most expensive or unusual gift in the room is rarely the most appreciated by the host. Even more importantly, avoid bringing any practical gifts as a host gift. These signal that you expect to be in regular contact with the person or household in question. This leaves the most appreciated gifts as wine, flowers, or pastry, simply because they carry a middle ground between personal and social.
Flowers are the most flexible standing entry in a gifting calendar
Flowers are the most flexible standing entry in a gifting calendar because they work on every level of every relationship. You don’t have to know what wine someone likes to bring them flowers, the same way you don’t have to know their dietary restrictions to bring them a meal. They brighten up the room they’re in and carry a certain level of personalization that a gift box of chocolates can’t necessarily manage.
There is one major consideration with flowers and gift-giving calendars, however. The time you buy them matters tremendously. Flowers brought to the door as guests arrive will necessitate the host finding a vase, cutting the stems, and arranging them in a manner that will hopefully look nice. Flowers brought the day before or the morning of an event are the table, the centerpiece, the room itself.
This is why your gift giving calendar needs a standing entry for ordering flowers some seven to ten days before an event, not on the day itself. Hosting or attending events in a particular city regularly? Set that as an annual reminder. Attending dinners, parties, or other events and using flowers across Melbourne as a standard host gift? Bookmark a local florist. A local florist with pre-arranged bouquets and flowers delivered to your door hours before an event is the difference between having thoughtfully brought a gift and having simply guessed at one.
A quarterly ‘just because’ day
Giving a gift shouldn’t be a chore to maintain relationships. Quite the opposite! A gift given to someone without any particular occasion in mind is the best kind of gift for any relationship and makes the receiver feel that the giver is thinking of them. The giver had to stop and think to select a gift, and in doing so, they thought of the receiver.
This is why you need a day on your gifting calendar dedicated to giving a gift just because. Pick one day in every quarter of the year, or January, April, July, and October, and select one or two important people in your life to give a small gift or note to. It doesn’t have to be a large gift, but it should be something you specifically thought of. A book they might be interested in reading, a small souvenir from somewhere you know they’ve been interested in visiting, or a note you’ve written specifically for them. It’s important to make it clear that you’ve done so.
This day will bring more joy to your relationships than any other day on your gifting calendar. It will also be the day you most frequently forget if it’s optional. That’s why you should treat it like a meeting and not a reminder. Add it to your diary.
Tracking what you’ve sent
A gift giving calendar always requires a tracking sheet or some sort of record, separate from the calendar itself. To track what you’ve sent, you’ll only need a simple spreadsheet. It should be able to hold a few basic pieces of information: who a gift was sent to, what was sent, when it was sent, and how much it cost. Three columns and a filter and you’re good to go.
You’re not tracking your generosity for any particular moral accounting or review, but to accomplish two simple goals: no gifts sent year after year after year to the same people on the same occasions (58% of people surveyed reported having hurt relationships by failing to give gifts to people on important occasions or gifts that were consistently forgotten; this stat also applied to gifts that were remembered but given in the same way year after year) and to ensure you’re not being consistently taken advantage of. If you’re sending gifts for three separate occasions to someone on tier two, and they’re not returning the favor, it’s not necessarily a moral failing on their end, but it will prompt you to possibly place them lower on your tier list in future.
The list also acts as a budgeting tool. Most people who do any accounting on the gifts they give find that they’re either over-paying on obligatory gifts while short-changing more personal ones, or the other way around. Just having a simple overview of what you’ve spent and on who allows you to correct that and ensure your budget isn’t completely blown by the holiday season.
Never allow the calendar to replace the note
A present without a note is a transaction. A note without a present is also a present, usually. If that’s true, and it is, then the note is the better and more important of the two, and it’s the part that’s often forgotten and should be added to any gift-giving calendar.
For every task on your gift giving calendar, add another task: write a note. Don’t print out a generic note from a website or use a sticker. Write something yourself that pertains to the gift or event or person. It can be short. It can’t be generic. Notes are also how host-gift rules are bent for circumstances where the gift itself can’t bend, such as a present sent before the event.
When you send a present ahead to a host, the note is what carries the relationship between you. It can be as simple as saying you’re looking forward to Saturday, but it can also say something about the last time you danced on the table together. It can be a simple assertion of friendship, or it can carry more meaning. The content of the note is what matters.
Pruning the calendar every quarter
An unpruned gifting calendar is the gift of obligation. Relationships change. Old friends become strangers. Some people stop being interesting to you. The way you felt about seeing someone every year and a half ago is not the same way you feel about seeing them once every two years now. With every seasonal pass (January, April, July, and October), open the spreadsheet, and scroll through the next three months, asking yourself this question: does giving this gift help maintain or strengthen a relationship, or do I just feel obligated to do so? If it’s the latter, consider skipping it or replacing a present with a card. The point of the gifting calendar and the effort involved with it is relationships, not obligations.
Careful pruning ensures a realistic gifting calendar for the year ahead. A realistic gifting calendar does not put unrealistic pressure on people to give gifts on holidays, but rather allows for smaller, more frequent gifts throughout the year. And smaller, more frequent gifts are all about the idea of a gift being a thought, and not an obligation. And for the thought to matter, it helps to remember that you’re thinking of someone at all, not least if you’re re-gifting an old obligation.
