33 Digital Tools vs. Analog Planners

Your calendar can be perfectly organized and you can still feel behind. We live inside digital tools all day long, and they’re excellent at storing information, sending reminders, and helping us coordinate with other people. But when it comes to clear thinking, real priorities, and making decisions on purpose, screens often pull us in the opposite direction. If you’ve ever picked up your phone to do one thing and gotten derailed by a text, an email, or a notification, you already know the problem. 

We talk through digital vs analog planning in a practical way: digital isn’t “bad,” and paper isn’t magic. The real goal is a productivity system you’ll use consistently. Digital calendars shine for appointments and shared schedules, while analog planning shines for focus, reflection, and turning a messy set of inputs into a clean plan. I explain why writing things down helps me slow down, combine multiple calendars and roles, and make sure my time reflects the goals I actually care about. 

You’ll also hear about a structured paper planner I use, the My Great Life Focus system from Atticus, and how it helps connect long-term goals, short-term goals, and daily “big wins.” (https://atticusadvantage.com/books/my-great-life-focus/) 

If you want more clarity, less distraction, and a calmer way to plan, hit play, subscribe, and share your take: are you team notebook, team app, or both?

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

Woods & Bates, PC - Woodsandbates.com

Transcript

Why Go Back To Paper

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Welcome back. We live in a very digital world. Calendars are digital, emails are digital, task lists are digital. When it comes to planning my day, my week, my priorities, I have reverted to old-fashioned pen and paper. Hasn't always been the case, and I'll get into that, but it is now. And today I want to talk about the digital versus analog planning, why analog planning may be a secret weapon you need, and many of us have forgotten about. You know, this used to be the way that it always was. We all had calendar, pen, paper, we'd write it down, but all the apps came along, all the electronics came along, and sometimes, even today, the best productivity tool isn't necessarily an app, could be a notebook. So I want to give you the caveat that there's no perfect system. Digital isn't bad, analog isn't magically better. The best planning system is one that you're going to use and one that you're going to use consistently. Each has strengths, each has weaknesses. We're not looking to find the perfect planner. The goal is to find a system that's going to help us

Digital Strengths And Hidden Distraction

SPEAKER_00 1:36

think clearly and accomplish what we want to accomplish. Some of the strengths, I think, of digital tools are they can help us with our calendars, they give us reminders for scheduling, collaborating with others, sharing information. We can access them on multiple devices. So if we don't have our phone, it can be on our iPad or vice versa. We have our Outlook apps, we have our Google apps, Apple Calendar, project management software, case management software. Digital systems are great at storing information and keeping things accessible and at our fingertips, but they struggle to help us think in my experience. They manage the information, but they can also manage our attention in ways that we don't necessarily want, and they can cause distraction. So for me, some of this planning is both reflecting and looking forward. When I sit down with the planner, I don't have the notifications on my phone that I have. I don't have emails that I'm distracted by. I don't have text messages that I'm distracted by, things like that. So how many times I pick up my phone to do something that I need to do, and then I see, you know, I've got an alert for a text message, and I deal with that text message, and then I look at something else. And by the time I set my phone down, I remember that I was supposed

Analog Planning For Clarity

SPEAKER_00 2:54

to do that thing that I picked it up for in the first place. So with the planner, our priorities are all in one place, our notes are all kept together, ideas. We can have, you know, those scribbled down, our tasks, goals, everything like that. So we can force ourselves to slow down, prioritize what matters, and think intentionally about what we want to accomplish when. We have to think a little bit, we have to put things together. For me, it's kind of coming up with an amalgamation of everything that I have going on different calendars, different roles in my life. And this isn't just about recording tasks, but it's about making sure that my time reflects the goals that I've set for myself. So one of the tools that I use is it's called the My Great Life Focus. It's from Atticus. I'll include a link in the show notes. Atticus is a lawyer coaching program that I'm involved in. But this is a system that I have initially begrudgingly implemented in my life because I thought, you know, I've got

Using Goals To Shape Your Week

SPEAKER_00 4:00

my phone, I've got my Outlook calendar, I've got all these things. What do I need a paper planner for? But that planner allows me to put down these are my long-term goals, short-term goals, and then my months, days, and years of what I want to accomplish all in one place. And it's really helped me to focus on here's what I want to accomplish this week, here's what I want to accomplish this day, here's my big wins for the day. And then at the end of the day, if I can check those off, you know, it gives me momentum into the next days, weeks, and months. So I can see it, you know, I can look at it and I can say, okay, here's the priorities I have for Monday. Here's the priorities I have for Tuesday and so on. And then it's easier to visualize how my week is going to or hopefully going to transpire. I'm not one click away from my email when I'm using it. You know, it's not sending me notifications to interrupt me, things like that. And it's it's creating some mental separation from all those constant inputs so that I can sit down and think about what I need to do. And for me, the quieter my environment is when I do this, the better, you know, my decision making, my reflection, things like that are. And there's tools within that planner to help with that. So it's kind of structured. It's not just a blank notebook. It has sections for your goals, it has sections for your calendar, it has sections for reflection, uh, things like that. This doesn't have to be all or nothing, though. To sit here and tell you that I only use analog planner would be disingenuous. I use both. So I still have my phone, I still have my outlook calendar through work. Appointments are made on there, I get notifications and alerts to know where I'm going, what I'm supposed to be doing, get my reminders, all of those things, and then I have a separate calendar for family things that family shares that calendar and puts those on there. So I look to my analog planner for putting

A Hybrid System That Actually Works

SPEAKER_00 5:54

all that together in one place, putting my plan together for the week and for the month, and making sure that those priorities are getting met, that I'm checking those boxes at the end of the day. And it gives me a place I can scribble down ideas whenever they come to me, and then I can come back to them later. So the digital stores are information. Analog kind of helps us to create clarity, in my opinion. So this can be pretty easy. You know, I would challenge you this week to sit down, maybe Sunday evening, Monday morning, spend 15 minutes to plan your day and your week on paper. Put your computer away, put your phone away, get rid of those notifications, and give yourself some time to think and see after that week what you've accomplished and if you have done the things that you wanted to do, and you'll have that all written down in one place. Some people will even go a step further

The 15 Minute Paper Challenge

SPEAKER_00 6:46

and they get colored pencils and they say, okay, green's going to be the things that I accomplished, red's the things I didn't accomplish, yellow is going to be somewhat accomplished. Then compare that week to your other weeks. Did you accomplish more? Did you feel more focused? Did you have lower stress? Those types of things. I think I think you'll like doing it this way. Technology can be a wonderful servant if used correctly, but it's a terrible master. We want to try to take control and step away from the screen because prog productivity isn't about having more tools. It's about having more clarity and more priority of the things that we're working on. When we're planning with intention, focusing on what matters, it's how we're going to maximize our time and elevate our life.