Two Rules for Combining Paper and Electronic Planning

The Giftie Etcetera Facebook Group was discussing combining paper and electronic planning.

Even for paper lovers (ME!), electronics are a real part of our lives.

Maybe work requires you to use a shared electronic calendar. Perhaps your teenager or spouse texts you when they add something to the calendar. (Or, if they are like my husband, claim you didn't tell them about the party UNLESS you have the Facebook message or e-mail to back up your words.)

Personally, I keep planning about on-line stuff (my legal research projects for work and my blog planning, mostly) in OneNote, my daily tasks (household tasks, checking e-mail, and prep for the next day) in an app, medication reminders as alarms on my phone, and my budget in a separate app.

There are two rules that I always follow.

1. Do NOT duplicate.

I don't write stuff in two places - the e-world and paper. Everything either goes in my planner or in OneNote. I don't copy back and forth.

Where I need a reminder to use the electronics, I put a note in my planner, but that is it.

For example, I have a repeating task that says to do "Dailies" in my planner. But the daily tasks are listed in my electronic app, not my planner.

2. Write down the rules.

Seriously.

It's so easy to get confused. So as you make rules for yourself, write them down (in ONE place - either OneNote/Evernote or your planner).

One rule is that work stuff gets scheduled in my paper planner along with my personal stuff. I do that because it's all my life. If I have to attend a meeting at 3 p.m., I also need another adult to cover school carpool and to dress in a suit at 7 a.m. Just putting that in my work planning is not enough. By not duplicating it, I manage to not accidentally miss anything - work or personal.

But I used to work at an office that required all of us to put things on a shared calendar in Outlook. Back then, I had a rule. Everything went in my ring-bound planner. Once a day, as a task in my paper planner, I shared things relevant to my office on the Outlook calendar. They got to know that I would be at a meeting with the Governor's office on Tuesday at 2 p.m., but for my dentist appointment at 10 a.m., they got "Personal Medical Leave, 10 a.m."

Another rule? Blog ideas go in my OneNote. So if I think of something on the road, it becomes a task: "O Put blog idea: paper and e-planning in ON." The task is to put it where it belongs, not where it's most convenient at that second.

Whatever your rules are, write them all down so that you can learn them and keep things straight.

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