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Digital Planner Vs Paper planner: Which is right for you?

Keeping a daily planner is a great way to stay organized, prevent burnout, and to identify patterns in your moods and energy levels. Planners helps you to reflect on where your time goes each day — for example towards work tasks, family and leisure activities —this way you can align your daily actions and habits with your bigger life goals.

There are lots of ways to keep a daily planner — including writing down your to-do list and appointments on paper, keeping a document on your computer, or using an app on your phone.

Whether you prefer a digital or paper planner, each type has its own pro’s and con’s. However, we feel that a digital planner has certain benefits that make it more useful compared to paper planners. Let’s look below at why both types can be helpful, but how a digital planner likely has more to offer you.

Paper Planner Benefits

Paper planners include schedules written down by hand on notebooks, wall calendars, or other type of written lists.

The benefits to keeping this type of planner include:

• Ease of use and flexibility, since you can write in one anywhere, at any time.
• It’s free to keep written schedules/lists and requires no use of apps or devices.
• You won’t be distracted when keeping written lists, but you might be when you open your phone or computer.
• You can also use your lists to brainstorm ideas and be more creative.
• One of the best things about paper planners is that they’re more “free-form,” since they allow you to draw, sketch and jot down anything else that comes to mind.

Another potential benefit is that it engages your mind more when you write things down by hand, compared to using devices which may require less mental effort. For example, some people remember information better when it’s hand written.

Digital Planner Benefits

Digital planners include things like productivity apps linked to your phone, or online calendars kept on your computer.

In many ways, a daily digital planner acts like your personal assistant, since it can keep your meetings, tasks and other responsibilities neatly organized.

The fact that most people today have their phones on them at all times, everywhere they go, means that digital planners are usually more convenient to use compared to paper lists or journals.

The advantages that digital planners have include:

• Easy to make edits. If you want to change something about your schedule or you make a mistake, it’s very simple to delete and replace something.
• You can send yourself reminders, so important tasks and meetings are never outlooked.
• Won’t take up physical space, since they’re stored on your devices.
• Some apps and programs are free, and you won’t ever run out of space or need to buy another journal.
• You can easily save lists/schedules and keep them forever. You’re unlikely to ever lose a digital planner compared to a notebook, since it’s stored on your devices.
• Because you can save and copy schedules/lists, it can be easier to make daily planning a habit that you stick with. It takes less effort to keep up with, which will help keep you consistent and accountable.
• You’re able to share your planner with other people digitally, or link your planner with other apps and programs (such as your computer’s calendar).

How The Digital Planner App Paced Can Help Manage Your Routine

Paced is a Smart Calendar that helps to build your schedule in a way that balances your career and personal life.

Paced works as a digital daily planner app that uses your circadian rhythm, also known as your “internal clock,” to determine periods of your day when you’re most productive, versus those when you’re most in need of rest. We call these periods your: focus zones, creativity zones, and exhaustion zones.

Not only can Paced set reminders for you, keep track of meetings and serve as a to-do list, it goes beyond these basic features to suggest how your day should be scheduled.

The app utilizes a bio-mathematical model to gauge your level of focus throughout the day. For an accurate calculation, you need to enter your sleep data into the Paced app, including when you wake up in the morning and when you fall asleep. Paced will then calibrate your natural productivity rhythm, based on your data, to help you plan your daily activities for optimal productivity and mental health.

Once you enter data for five consecutive days (including your sleep duration, bedtime and wake-up time), Paced can calculate how your concentration and alertness are likely to fluctuate from morning to night. By becoming aware of ups and downs in terms of your focus and energy levels, you can plan which activities best fit into your schedule at different times — for example when you should exercise, concentrate on work, go to sleep, or take a mental break

This type of planning is only possible with help from a digital app, since a schedule written on paper cannot automatically make mathematical predictions for you. This is one reason why we recommend digital planners, such as Paced, to help you maintain an organized and effective schedule.