I consider myself an early adopter. I like electronics, have had a cell phone and a PDA for a long time, and am willing to try a new, new thing that promises to make life better. In short, I am an optimist.
But recently I became an early adopter in the completely other direction. After mounting frustration with multiple power failures and memory loss, I demoted my Microsoft Outlook Calendar Program and Tungsten Palm Pilot with Bluetooth capability and a whole load of other bells and whistles for a paper based calendar that costs a fraction of the price and guess what? It works a whole lot better.
While I still keep all my telephone numbers on my Palm (database uses like this make sense to me), and I do refer to it occasionally, my daily life is much happier being organized with a pencil among the many, clean white pages of my daily planner. Each day gets two pages: one for notes and one for a to do list and the hourly appointments of the day.
And guess what else? Aside from weekends, I fill up every page, every day. This is a freedom that my PDA or any of the other gadgets I used never allowed me.
While there are good uses for technology and gadgetry, they are not the solution for everything as they would like you to think.
Since December, my open planner has lived in front of my keyboard on my desk (where I can see it without changing screens) every day. I refer to it, I make notes in it, I doodle in it and I use it heavily. AND it never dies for lack of power or gives me an error message.
I have found that for the creative and often surprising task of day to day living, a human scale solution - such as a blank piece of paper with lines on it - is a far better design than anything you have to turn on, boot up, or type into with your forefinger. Paper just works better. MGR
(For the record, I use Franklin Covey's Classic Two pages a day planner because I was inspired by Steven Covey's 7 Habits years ago.)
I'm with you--I never did adopt the PDA approach, though I am addicted to e-mail and a few other technologies. My planner is the At-A-Glance pocket-sized calendar, because it needs to fit in my pocket. I do, however, enter a lot of things into the on-line Yahoo! Calendar, solely for the purpose of setting up e-mail reminders.
Same here. I bought myself a fabulous new computer and I love it, but I still make out my to-do lists on lined mini-legal pads and use a wall calendar for appts.
I'm a little technology bitter today since it is evident that I will have to buy a new iPod. It's techno-crack and I'm addicted. Dependent. Annoyed.
But, thankfully, my paper desk calendar has never let me down. I keep them year after year and it's a nice little time capsule.
I currently use a paper planner, but I like a weekly calendar big enough to fit to-do lists and my big sloppy handwriting, which means that I don't always have my calendar with me (like when I carry a small bag). My planner is great, though, because I can slip directions and invitations between pages so they are at the ready. I can circle the important items and cross tasks out once completed. Plus, there is some kind of satisfaction in moving the little gold ribbon to mark the passage of a new week.
Even though I'm a big user of e-mail and love my digital music, I still keep my life from descending into chaos with the help of a leather-bound pocket journal from Kate's Paperie. I have similar books going back to 1977, and I keep all of them (except for 1980, which I managed to lose) in a box in my closet. Maybe once a year I look through them. It's wonderful to have all the old phone numbers and addresses, names of half-forgotten boyfriends and projects, etc.
After killing two PalmPilots and losing a third, I gave up and switched back to a simple paper notebook. I spend all day looking at computers and tv screens, and the last thing I want to be looking at is some ugly-but-functional office program. I do keep my contacts on my computer as well as my billing hours and finances, but everything else is post-its and lined paper. There's a satisfaction I get from striking out an errand I've finished that I don't get from loading up a calendar program and checking things off. Plus, I once lost my little notebook and someone mailed it back to me! I can't imagine anyone being honest enought to mail me my missing Palm Pilot...
I completely agree- I carry a small planner with me everyday and I can remember to put stuff it in and write down my plans for the week better than when I try to remember to (as an example) in any computer or email calanders. Mine's just a little cheapo one- very plain, but it get's the job done and I always know what's going on. Not only that, it has tons of extra pages for notes and addy/ph# section- so I have everything right there with me at all times. Plus the fact that I just like write stuff down and I'm a big fan of lists. I also keep them all after they're used up (I know, clutter) because I write down all the little memorable things that happen to me as well- makes me smile when I discover them again, and go back and read through.
Count me in. I like a big binder calendar that has the whole month on 2 pages. Sadly, I don't have the active life that many others here have. I just never got into the habit of using my palm for that. What I do like my Palm Pilot for is a list of all my books (otherwise I'll buy the same ones) and my knitting needles.
I was addicted to my day planner for many years and never thought I'd go to the Palm, but I made the leap about three years ago. And I love it. I've got all the usual stuff, addresses, calendar, etc., plus many pictures of my niece, lists upon lists of different things, like Movies to See, Books to Read, Places to Eat, all my vital info. Plus, when I taught, I'd keep my grade book in Excel in there too, so I'd always be able to pull up students grades when they asked (which they always do!). But I completely understand about the paper. Now that I have a total desk job, I also have my work Outlook calendar and my paper appointment book for work. But for my personal life, I made the Palm switch and love being able to have it in my small purse and always with me. Of course, now that I have the iPod it's getting a bit crowded in there!
> Paper just works better.
I have to disagree. As a very forgetful person, I'd miss most of my meetings even though they're written down on my paper calendar. My life depend on the beep of my Palmpilot warning me whenever I have to do something at a specific time.
> I once lost my little notebook and someone
> mailed it back to me! I can't imagine anyone
> being honest enought to mail me my missing
> Palm Pilot...
I'm glad you were lucky. But most people never get their lost notebooks back. But Palmpilot owners can lose their pda without losing their data which is safely backed up on their PC. Lack of an up-to-date backup is IMHO *the* major shortcoming of paper notebooks.
While I do love paper and books, you'll have to pry my pda from my cold dead fingers!
I've got to bristle at this a tad, here. Being the gadget-addicted geek that I am, the thought of returning to analog paper, while romantic, just doesn't satisfy the "cool factor." Besides, I used to have a paper planner (suitably geeked-out with tabs and folders and stickers and such), but I always forgot to actually LOOK at the thing. Now I have a PDA that beeps at me, so I actually have some kind of external warning. Sure, I'm susceptible to all the foibles of data storage, but it just works for me.
Yay, paper! I heart my Moleskin daily planner. It's compact and classy, and for around $12, even packs a little snob appeal (I got mine at the Conran store, plus Moleskin boasts about its literary heritage ... notebooks used by hemingway, etc). The address section is removable, thus transferable between books from year to year.
Moleskin also sells a handy mini-accordian file that's great for filing receipts and storing stuff that'd normally clutter up a wallet (frequent-customer cards, all that stuff).
If you want an excellent week-based planner, try going to www.plannerpads.com and see what they have. I'm using the personal spiral edition and it has been great so far.
Has anyone tried this middle-ground idea?
Use Palm Desktop or Outlook or whatnot to enter everything in and have a backup but then print out the calendar (& todo, etc.) pages and work from them on a daily basis. This might be the best of both worlds, though it would mean having to work either with loose sheets or putting the sheets in a binder, neither of which has the tactile and aesthetic pleasure of, say, a Moleskine. I might give it a whirl.
I have not yet bought my daytimer refills b/c they were all out of the ones I like - I thought it was time for a blackberry or palm or the like but cannot envision doing that just yet -any suggestions on how to learn outlook ? I am on the UES and need a Hands On teacher - all my friends say its so easy but no one takes the time to say - here's how - anyone want to show me ??
ELisabeth
Hey Peter, thanks for the plannerpads tip!
What is the nice planner in the picture in the upper right corner of this article? Looks promising and interesting.
To the person whose bag is getting cluttered because of carrying an iPod PLUS another gadget... since an iPod is just a hard drive, I'm pretty sure you can download your Outlook addresses, appointments, etc. into it. (I have an iPod but have never actually used this function.) Does anybody use an iPod for this, and does it work well?
If you think about it, paper is really the premium solution for note taking and other things done normally in handwriting. Tablet PCs and PDAs and new screen technologies are just trying to catch up to the natural look and feel of plain old pen and paper.
I like paper for notes and to do lists. I like my Palm for just about everything else.
If I gave up my Palm, I would feel compelled to carry with me at all times
1. a dictionary
2. a thesaurus
3. a Bible
4. Maltin's movie guide
5. a calendar with way too many crossouts and arrows
If you noticed that I didn't mention an address book in the list, that is because with the rapid fluctuations in E-mail addresses, area codes, and mobility, I would never, ever switch to a paper address book again.
--I use a two stage system, brightly colored note cards to quickly capture ideas. As note cards they are part of my UCT - Ubiquitous Capture Tool, I then try to, once a day, transfer that information to TexNotes Pro by GemX, a wonderful notes organizer, that suprisingly can work from my thumb drive, making updating my notes a computer away, I can also "publish" my info to an ebook format making it possible to give away selected information, or have selected, non-editable information a click away.
--For must have, right now I use a PDA for brining up information that I have to have now, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, how to's organized in a pocketpc notes program called ADB Idea Library a freeware notes program which is the most used program on my pocketpc besides Ubook ebook reader.
I am another from whom you'd have to pry my Palm from my cold, dead hands. Most things that you think will change your life don't, but my Palm did. Besides all the other things people mentioned, I have recently started using my "to do" function in a more effective way, following the book, "Getting Things Done," by David Allen, the best book on personal organization I've ever read (but definitely not limited to using electronic devices) and which I discovered as the result of a surf either starting from this website or another shelter site (design sponge? who knows).
I've had my PDA two years now. My Palm synchs to my computer at work (not yet to the relatively new one at home), so I always have my work and personal calendars synched. At work, that means that anyone can "busy search" a whole group of people's calendars (as long as they've all got their calendars online) to to find a mutually free time to set up a meeting. Soooo timesaving. Trying to set up a meeting any other way seems so archaic now.
And, that's just one thing. But, I have to go to work now!...
I've gone back and forth and am now using my iPod as a fully functional PDA. I use iSync to download my contact and calander information, save any notes, to do lists or other information as .txt files and save them into my notes section, and use the iPod as a file storage and transfer device. On top of all that, I have my entire music collection with me at all times.
For spur of the moment info I always carry a reporter's notebook to jot down any random thoughts or other information, but that data gets transferred into my iPod the next time I'm at the computer.
Using the iPod as a PDA requires that you regularly input data into your computer and then sync, but since I charge my iPod every other day, syncing is not a problem. the sync also guarantees my iPod and computer have the same information.
Hey . . . if you are going to carry the damn thing around all the time, you might as well use it.