Hybrid Planning
Even though we love paper and pen, it’s a fact of life that we live in a tech world and we use our tech no matter what. It’s where our contacts, reminders and emails live. It’s how we research, navigate and communicate. But there are still so many benefits to paper planning. It helps solidify ideas in a tangible way. We can see everything laid out in front of us and it helps our ideas and plans feel a little less nebulous. Planning on paper helps our brains feel more organized and at ease. And there’s no beating the great sense of accomplishment in physically checking a box instead of deleting a task from an app. Between the satisfaction of paper and the ease of digital is a really beautiful marriage of these two modes of planning.
Hybrid planning is an excellent way to get the most out of digital and paper planning. Your entire life is probably on your phone, but it’s not easy to see it all laid out on a screen in the palm of your hand. When customizing a Golden Coil planner, we love the ability to upload digital calendars to print in our planner. That way, we can access those calendars on-the-go using our phones but we can also see a more expansive timeline when we sit down to plan in our planner. You can print birthdays, anniversaries, events, school calendars or any other long-standing commitments that you know of ahead of time into your planner. To do this, all you have to do is export your calendar and upload that file when customizing your planner. We made a helpful tutorial video for this process for both Apple and Google calendars.
You could also use this same process to create a custom calendar* printed into your paper planner full of goal reminders, self-care challenges, or inspirational messages for yourself. (Imagine a motivating quote from The Rock every time you flip to Monday!) If you’re prepping for a marathon, you could print your training schedule. If you need to be better at making time for yourself, you could print different self-care prompts in each week’s spread. Or you could surprise yourself with little bits of insight by sprinkling quotes from your favorite thinkers throughout your calendar. There are so many ways you could use this feature to make your planner even more customized!
Another plus to hybrid planning is data insurance. If you’re like us, you can probably remember phone numbers for a couple of people. But what if your phone dies and you can’t call mom on her birthday?! Printing your contacts will give you peace of mind! You can print your contacts into your custom Golden Coil planner a couple of easy ways. See our tutorial here.
Using your phone can really help amplify the work you do in your paper planner. On paper, you’ll get the overall view, but supplementing with your phone allows you to add time-sensitive reminders, such as starting the washing machine or leaving for an appointment at the right time. With all the time you need to spend working on your phone or computer, it’s also helpful to use apps to keep yourself on task. We love using Momentum, an extension for Chrome, that transforms your home page into a beautiful and motivating spread. You can customize the greeting and tasks so that every time you open a new tab, you’re reminded of your main focus for the day.
A few other productivity-focused apps and features that we love:
We love the sidebar features in Gmail—Tasks, Keep, and Calendar—which allow you to make a running to-do list and keep an eye on your appointments for the day while you’re working through your inbox. You can even set up location specific reminders with Google Keep.
If you’re coordinating projects with team members, Asana is an excellent resource for keeping everything organized and streamlined.
The Notes app on iOS has a lot of features that marry well with the work you’ll do in your paper planner! You can add bubbles next to your to-do items to replicate some of that checkmark satisfaction. You can also scan documents and add photos—you could use this feature to photograph your sticky-note list or planner page, allowing you to take your notes with you without needing to take an extra item on some errands.
We love the Productive app for a digital habit tracker! You could add the habits you’re tracking in your paper planner and be reminded while you’re away from your desk, keeping you accountable and successful.
Whatever combination of digital and paper planning you use, we hope using your customized Golden Coil planner makes the process enjoyable and streamlined. Your goals and plans shouldn’t be held back by a planning process that doesn’t suit you, which is why our goal is to make your planning as individualized and easy as possible.
How do you like to hybrid plan? Share with us in the comments below!
*Keep in mind that the character limit for events in the monthly view is about 20 characters. Longer phrases will be printed in full on the weekly view.