There are six cycles in a year, one per two-month block. January and February, March and April, May and June, July and August, September and October, November and December. Each is six working weeks, which is 42 days, followed by two weeks or a little more of lighter work for planning and recovery. That extra slack in the breaks is what absorbs the leftover days so the pattern lands cleanly year after year.
I have run mine this way since 2016 and named every one after a city. Here are the current and upcoming dates.
2026
2027
Why the dates fall where they do
Every cycle starts on a Monday and ends on a Friday. That sounds obvious and it is the single most useful constraint in the whole calendar, because it means a cycle never begins mid-week and nobody has to remember a start date that lands on a Wednesday.
Six weeks is 42 days, so six cycles account for 252 days of the 365. The remaining 113 are the breaks, holidays, and the slack that keeps the pattern from drifting. That is why the gaps between cycles are not identical: the November block runs a little shorter because December takes what it takes, and the January start waits until the year has actually begun rather than pretending the first week of January is a working week.
The honest version is that the calendar bends slightly around real life every year, and that is fine. What does not bend is that there are six of them, they start on Mondays, and they are decided in advance.
They do not line up with quarters, on purpose
Six two-month blocks do not divide into four quarters, so a cycle will regularly straddle a quarter boundary.
If your business reports quarterly, run both. They answer different questions. A quarter says what matters. A cycle says what actually gets done, by whom, on which day, in how many hours. The comparison against quarters, sprints and Shape Up goes into where each one earns its place.
Laying the rhythm over your own year
You do not need my dates and you do not need to wait for January.
- Pick the next Monday that gives you a clear six weeks. Not the perfect one. The next one.
- Count forward 42 days and put the end on the Friday.
- Block the following two weeks before you plan anything into them, because that is the part that will otherwise get eaten.
- Name it, and name the two after it as well, so there is somewhere to put work that clearly is not happening now.
- Then let the rest of the year fall out from there. Six blocks, roughly two months apart.
Waiting for a tidy starting point is one of the more common ways people never start at all.
Publishing the dates is half the value
Once the year is mapped, tell people. Clients, your team, whoever schedules things with you.
A published calendar turns the break from a thing you have to defend each time into a fact people plan around. It also forces you to look further ahead than you probably were, and to set expectations you can actually hold. That is covered properly in how to tell clients you work in cycles.
The whole method is in the guide to running your work in six-week cycles.