It’s no secret that screen time is not good for us — especially if we’re trying to do something productive. Between the constant distractions, the blue light, and the way online activity rewires our brains, digital devices don’t make it easy to get things done.
Fortunately, there’s a great alternative to electronic ecosystems. Paper-based organization.
Unlike online platforms and apps, these analog productivity systems are completely private, infinitely customizable, and don’t require batteries, upgrades, or subscriptions. Best of all, instead of clicking and scrolling to see one bit of your agenda at a time, you can look at the same information on a piece of paper and easily see an entire week or month at a glance.
Using physical media, you can get your information out of the cloud (where tech companies control it), and out of your head (where it rattles around and gets forgotten until it wakes you up at 3 a.m.). By doing so, you’ll not only be more productive, you’ll save time, reduce stress, and be less dependent on potentially unreliable tech.
If you’ve looked into this topic, you may have noticed that there are many different paper-based organization systems out there: Bullet Journal, DayTimer, Day Runner, Franklin Covey, Hobonichi, Clever Fox … The list goes on. As a long-time organization nerd, I’ve tried every setup I could over the last 20+ years. Based on that experience, here’s my crash-course on how to get up to speed with analog productivity.
Simpler is Better
If you go on Etsy or Amazon, you’ll see hundreds of different paper planners and organizers. A lot of them are fairly basic, but some of them have dozens of different kinds of pages. Maybe that kind of over-engineered approach works for some people, but in my opinion, it’s overwhelming and counterproductive.
The point of a productivity system is make your life easier, not to make it more complicated. Or, to look at it another way, the more over-engineered a system is, the more rigid it becomes. You’re better off with an approach that lets you tailor it to the way you prefer to think and do things. To do that, you really only need three things.
#1. The Weekly Planner
A weekly planner is the heart of analog productivity. It allows you to keep track of two types of information:
Scheduled Events. This category includes meetings, appointments, and travel, as well as important occasions, such as birthdays and holidays.
Tasks. This category includes all the individual things you intend to do.
A planner is formatted as a calendar, usually with an entire week visible on one two-page spread. Depending on which one you use, it can offer a variety of other helpful features, like spaces for “brain-dumping” and habit-tracking.
Scheduled events are easy: just write them on the days where they belong. Managing tasks can be a little more personalized. The three main schools of thought are:
Brain-dump all your to-do items onto one big list, and then transfer each task to the day and time you want to do it. This is a great approach if you have a lot floating around in your head, and you need to get it all out before you forget about something. However, the danger is that items just sit in that big list without ever being assigned an actual day and time to get done.
Fit the tasks into the calendar as you think of them. Whenever possible, this is my preferred method, because it forces me to figure out when it’s realistically possible for me to do something. Some people take this “time-blocking” to an extreme, and schedule their entire day, including the time it takes to get ready, eat, sleep, etc. Personally, I find that overwhelming, so I only write down things that are not part of my regular routine.
Sort tasks into categorized lists, and then pick items from the list when you’re in that mode. For example, if you know you need to run an errand, you can look at your “errands” list and try to batch as many of them together as you can. Other categories (what David Allen, creator of the GTD system, calls “contexts”) include “at home,” “at work,” “online,” “with spouse,” and so on. This is much better than an undifferentiated list, but it’s still a good idea to do a little pre-planning by transferring items from the context lists to your weekly plan so that you reduce uncertainty and “figuring-out time.”
Whichever way you prefer to manage your to-do list, the point is to get these tasks out of your head and into a dedicated system. The first time you do this, you’ll probably be dismayed by how much you’ve committed to. But that’s okay: if you realize there’s more than you can possibly get done, you can be proactive and manage that issue before it causes major problems. And, the payoff comes quickly: once you get your to-do list out of your head, your brain will learn to stop trying to keep track of everything. As a result, you’ll feel more creative and focused, and less anxious and uncertain about what you should be doing.
#2. The Notebook
Of course, life is more than just an endless to-do list — or, at least, it should be! So, where do you stash your hopes, dreams, memories, and ideas? A notebook.
A notebook isn’t just a place to write things down. It’s also a place to find them later. And that’s were most people trip up. They’ll fill notebooks, and then have no idea where they wrote what. Sadly, the notebook becomes a black hole that ideas go into, never to be seen again.
The secret here is to use numbered pages and a table of contents. When you write something down, simply make a note of the topic and page number on your table of contents. That way, a week, a month, or a year later, you can easily find it. It only takes a moment at the time, and it can save hours later.
#3. The Monthly Calendar
A weekly planner is vital, but it’s also very helpful to be able to get a higher-level view of everything happening over the next few weeks or months. That’s where a monthly calendar comes into play. Because a monthly calendar gives you much less room to write on than a weekly planner, it’s important to prioritize. Remember the two categories of information? Only scheduled events go in the monthly calendar. Birthdays, meetings, appointments, travel – those go in. Tasks stay in the planner, where you can .
Now, in fairness, this is the one part of the system that actually works pretty well electronically. If you already feel comfortable with a digital platform like Outlook or Google Calendar, there’s nothing wrong with that. Once you get used to using the other parts of an analog system, you may want to switch to a paper calendar, or use one as a backup for the other.
Either way, using the calendar is simple: write your scheduled events in it, as soon as they’re scheduled — or, in the case of birthdays and other recurring events, at the beginning of the year or whenever you get a new calendar. Essentially, the calendar shows you the big picture; the planner shows you the details.
Work Like a Human
A big advantage of a paper system is that you can estimate and approximate things. Computers demand exact data, but our brains tend to be a little fuzzy on the details. Our brains are analog, so using an analog system allows for a more natural level of flexibility.
For example, if you know you need to call a plumber tomorrow, but you’re not sure when you’ll be able to do it, just put it on your list without a time. On the other hand, if you know you’ll need to go to the store on your lunch break, write in the time so that you can plan around it. Calendar apps struggle with the idea of unplanned events that don’t last all day, but on paper, it’s perfectly clear.
The big benefit here is that you can do things the way you want to do them, rather than the way some tech company thinks you should. If you’re used to having to adapt yourself to apps, it can feel amazingly freeing to start writing things down in the way that makes sense to you.
Keep It Complete
One of the main things I’ve learned over the years is: you have to put everything into your system. If you still have a few tasks you’re trying to remember, or a few ideas written on random scraps of paper, your brain will not be able to relax; you’ll still have the “what am I forgetting?” feeling that we all dread.
Because of this, if events are on your calendar, do you copy them onto your planner? The answer is yes!
It may feel redundant to write things in two places, but psychology demands it. If you have some things in your calendar but not your planner, you are going to feel some level of anxiety unless you check both all the time. But, if, at the beginning of the week, you synchronize your calendar and planner, and then build the rest of your week with those commitments in mind, you can relax. You’ll feel confident you have everything in one place and are not forgetting anything.
Taking the First Step
If you’re used to keeping everything in your head, or scattered across phone notes and scraps of paper, it takes a little time to build the habit of getting yourself organized. But that’s another advantage of paper: when you have a physical book or binder in your space, it reminds you to use it (as opposed to an app on your phone that’s easy to ignore).
As I mentioned, there are a million different products on the market to choose from. With that said, if you like the one that I’ve used in this demonstration, printable PDFs are included in the Unpreoccupied e-book, which is free for Technoskeptical readers.
The book goes into more detail about how paper-based organization can reduce stress and anxiety, and includes a step-by-step organization process.
Whether you use my specific method or not, I hope you’ll give analog productivity a try. Focus more and worry less using paper-based organization!