Regardless of what you do for your work or education, it’s very likely that you need a way to keep yourself organized, manage your schedule and overview your tasks.
Having a planner will help you achieve a greater sense of control over many aspects of your life.
However, the way we use paper planners is not the most efficient way to plan.
Enter digital planners!
Digital planning uses the foundation of our traditional method of paper planning and transforms it into a more streamlined process.
If you are sitting there wondering: ‘should I use a digital planner?’ then let’s get right to it.
I’m here to share with you some of the benefits I found for choosing a digital planner instead of a paper planner.
Benefits of Digital Planning
Why use a digital planner? Below I share my 11 reasons to love digital planner.
1. The Planner Is Customizable
With a digital planner file you can change the layout of the document, move pages up and down, delete or duplicate elements, add new templates and create brand new pages and sections with a click of a button.
You get endless layout possibilities with a digital planner!
Having a customizable document means that you can make it to suit your needs instead of having to adapt your planner style to the available layout in a paper planner.
If you like to color code and use different inserts, then a digital planner will make your planning journey so much more enjoyable.
There are some ways to customize paper planners, especially when you use a binder system, but the limitations are huge if compared to what you can achieve with a digital planner and it will require many more tools and accessories too.
2. It saves you time
Using a digital planner, you can be more efficient by coping tasks and appointments, dragging and dropping items, duplicate pages or erasing items with a click of a button.
You can also write freely and later go back to edit color and position of the information written in the page. Working as a batching system will always be more productive.
And even more conveniently, you can perform search through your document and find information you wrote easily without having to scroll through pages and remember where you wrote something.
A digital planner basically free up time that you would otherwise use to storage and organize information in a traditional planning way.
3. Digital Planning Is Affordable
It’s likely you already have the device used for digital planning at your disposal as most people nowadays are equipped with a smart phone.
The premium applications needed are generally less than $10 (one-time payment) and there are plenty of free options if you just don’t have anything to invest yet.
And as for the digital planner itself you don’t need to spend anything straight away. Grab my free digital planner sample to test it first.
This is an undated planner and you can start from any day on any device. After you have given it a try you will be able to pinpoint what you like or not and find the perfect planner for your needs too!
Take the quiz to find out what is the best digital planner for you.
4. It’s reusable
The single use paper planners cannot be reused. Some paper planners cost over $50 and you must purchase one every year.
But with digital templates, you can basically use the same layout forever. You don’t have to change to another template, especially if you have undated digital planners. But even with dated digital planners there are ways to re-purpose them, meaning that you only needed to get a digital planner once and have it working for you for a long time.
However, that’s not the only thing you’re going to save.
All the stickers and all the washi tapes that you purchase.
Those are all one-time use. And once they’ve been used, you must buy more to be able to decorate, add details or write in a different color pen.With digital planners, everything you have is reusable as many times as you wish!
5. Digital Planners Help Reduce Waste
With the reusable features, you don’t have the single use paper anymore.
And you don’t have to buy several different stickers, pencils and pens to use with it because the digital stationery can be used over and over again, indefinitely!
So digital planners are more environmentally friendly than traditional planners because you have less clutter and you produce less waste.
The impact of each person may be perceived as small but as a group we have the ability to impact on a great way with everyone doing their part.
6. A Digital Planner Is Accessible Everywhere
With a digital planner you can access your notes and task from everywhere as it’s possible to sync with a variety of devices.
No matter if you forgot your paper planner at home.
With a digital planner you can add entries from your phone, ipad or tablet. Some apps even allow you to sync with web applications and have a complete cross platform system that can be accessed with devices from any operational system.
7. It’s Portable
Even though your device might be just about the same size as a traditional planner, you can carry so much more information that ever possible with an analog system.
Think of all your college notebooks accessible from one single app. Portability without limits.
8. Digital Planning Is The Best Of Both Worlds
Our brains are designed to process information and not to store it, therefore writing things down come with several benefits for focus and productivity – and this is one of the biggest benefits of using a planner.
Digital planners have the same positive effect when it comes to writing.
With the new technology being developed and available to us we can now write in our tablets and phone in a very similar way that we do in paper and therefore combine paper and digital planner absolute best features to get to the new level of productivity.
A digital planner is now simply a paper planner in the digital age, allowing us to clarify goals, priorities and intentions without the limitations of paper.
9. Always Have A Backup
Paper is a fragile material that can get ripped, wet and lost with no way of having backups unless you make more hard copies.
However, a digital planner can have several backups online all done automatically for you.
Which means that if something happened to your device you can access all of your information from another device or copy the backup of your planner from the cloud.
10. It’s shareable
If you need to share an appointment, notes or anything inside a digital file you can simply duplicate a page and send to others without having to scan or use more paper as you would have to do with physical planners.
11. Better Overall Organization System
The library in the PDF annotation apps let you make fodders and organize your digital files in a way that makes senses to you.
Some apps will even allow you to link to other documents within your library so you can easily toggle between documents and access information with a click.
No more dozens of journals to go through, simply get an overview of all your documents from one single dashboard using digital files.
Honestly, I believe that considering the pros and cons of digital planners it seems like an obvious conclusion to want to make the transition to digital planning or at the very least give it a go, right?
But what exactly do you need to be able to plan? I’ll cover the basic digital planner gear in the next chapter!
Ready to get started?
Grab my free digital planner sample, digital stickers and more at the Digital Planner Hub!