I spent several years using outlook, apple ical and windows live calendar. I then ended up having to write a backend for icalendar protocol and saw what a shit crock everything is. It's a miracle any of it works.

Last year I moved back to a paper diary and a mechanical pencil. It is considerably more flexible, readable and editable. I hit several brick walls with computer based calendars particularly with having to add complex events like "every third Friday but not the 25th because I'm on holiday then".

Free form is sometimes better than structure.

Its like going from a relational database to a document store.

If you want a flexible calendar application that can handle rules like that, you need Remind[1].

For example, if you want to be reminded every third Friday of the month, except on 19th of July because you're on holiday, you can write:

  OMIT 19 July MSG Holiday
  REM Fri 15 SKIP MSG My Event

Now you ask it to print the events for the next six months:

  $ remind -s6 test.rem
  2013/07/19 * * * * Holiday
  2013/08/16 * * * * My Event
  2013/09/20 * * * * My Event
  2013/10/18 * * * * My Event
  2013/11/15 * * * * My Event
  2013/12/20 * * * * My Event

As you see, it skipped "My Event" on the July 19th, because it was an Holiday.

[1]: http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind

I can't really be bothered with all that after basically writing that entire solution for a private company. Another metalanguage to learn...

Plus I have to have a network connection and log into a UNIX box for it which I can't do whilst I'm on the phone as it's stuck to my head at the time.

Not really defeatist, but impractical. There are functions like reminders and invitations you just can't get with paper calendars easily.

You don't always hear reminders and invitations don't always work properly.

I'd rather have neither than any that aren't trustworthy.

Nothing always works properly ("Perfect is the enemy of good").

A paper calendar and pencil simply doesn't scale if you need to share & sync calendar events with a team or group of people. Or simply want to keep your phone's datebook in sync with the one in your email client, etc.

Yes but some things rarely work perfectly.

It scales fine. In fact it scaled for hundreds of years before electronic calendars appeared. They mobilized two world wars with pens, paper and typewriters.

Synchronisation is not an issue if you have one single source of truth.

I get that you don't need a digital calendar. I've really not ever had that many issues syncing our team's calendars between mobile & desktop clients. Perhaps I've had good luck.

It seems your argument against a digital calendar holds for all the things you're seeking a non-Google replacement for. In light of that, do we really need email or blogs, or federated IM, for that matter? Write a letter instead.

Indeed. Paper calendars might have worked for WWI and WWII, but that took a lot of effort and was not instantaneous. I would also like to get up in the morning and not have to actively check the calendar to see what are my daily tasks -- rather, I would passively glance at my phone (or computer) and have it tell me what are my daily tasks. It's just less overhead to worry about, and freeing some brain cycles for whatever tasks you may have ahead. It's either lazy or efficient, whatever you prefer :)