planners: electronic v. paper

Sunday, July 14, 2013

This has been a big debate for me. I'm a huge fan of paper products - Rifle notebooks, Minted holiday cards, anything from Paper Source. I'm especially picky about planners. I was on the verge of pre-ordering (six month early) the Day Designer by Whitney English because it seemed to fit everything I've been looking for as I attempt to streamline my organizational process.

I ended up waiting, and I'm glad I did, because I came across Todoist. I have never been more impressed with an electronic "planner": tasks divided into "projects" and sub-projects (so much more efficient than my separate work and personal planners), integration with iCal and google calendar, synchronization across devices, a well-designed interface, the ability to add file attachments, color-coding (!!!), and my favorite, the capability to assign an email as a task directly from gmail. I was sold. At $29 for a year of Premium use, it also cost less than most of the planners I've purchased. The nerd in me also loves that it tracks your productivity (graphs!) and archives everything, so you can see exactly what you accomplished (one of my reasons for sticking with paper in the past).

You know that I have a problem with over-planning, so this is great. Less focus on spending time trying to organize my to-dos within the planner itself and more about setting and forgetting. It's also less to carry around. I have the app on my phone, and I don't have to remind myself to jot that to-do down in my paper planner later. So electronic v. paper? I'd never thought I'd say this, but electronic is winning.

Anyone else use Todoist?

1 comments:

Hollyanne Fricke said...

so cool! i've heard good things about todoist. i signed up for an account yesterday and downloaded the iphone app..kind of bummed they don't have an ipad app, though. did you buy the premium account? worth it?

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