The point is that in order to remember the order that the dates should be put in, you need to remember google's 'reference' layout .. Jan 2 15:04:05 2006 MST ... in other words:
1) Month, 2) Day of Month, 3) Hour, 4) Minute, 5) Second, 6) Year
So yes, you DO need to remember that the numbers are 'month/day' ordered, in order to, from memory, derive that it's 2006-01-02, and not 2006-02-01. With strftime, we effectively standardised "%Y-%m-%d"
1) Month, 2) Day of Month, 3) Hour, 4) Minute, 5) Second, 6) Year
So yes, you DO need to remember that the numbers are 'month/day' ordered, in order to, from memory, derive that it's 2006-01-02, and not 2006-02-01. With strftime, we effectively standardised "%Y-%m-%d"