In middle school we were required to always have our daily planner with us that the school provided. They would make us write down important dates like school assemblies and homework due dates. I didn’t use it very often outside of that, but having a place to make write down TO-DO list items was helpful. Once I ran out of space in my planner, I started using a smaller notepad. If I finished a task I’d cross it off, if not I’d move it to the next page, along with having due dates next to some items if needed. We also got a daily planner in high school, but we weren’t required to always have it. Around the same time my parents got me a cork board dry erase calendar and using the two, I’d transfer from my TO-DO list to the calendar.

Later in high school my parents gave me a basic flip phone, and later on a Samsung Blackjack which gave me another way to take notes. Since they didn’t have apps, I would use a text message draft. And if I thought something was important enough, I would send it to myself so 1) I wouldn’t lose the draft and 2) I would have an unread message as a reminder. A draw back of this system is that now had to manage notes from three different sources: notepad, dry erase calendar, and phone.

This continued until junior college when I started using G-Suite. I still had a basic phone, but now I also had a laptop with me all day. For a while I kept things in-sync by hand, but once I started leaning into Keep and Calendar I never looked back.

There were a few times that Keep had long outages (2-4 days) so I’d move over to Evernote. I’d enjoy all the extra features for a while, then be disappointed with what I couldn’t do. When I’d go back to Keep I’d be satisfied with it’s simplicity, but have a nagging feeling that it could all come crumbling down any second.

When I stared my undergrad I had lot more to do, so I had a hard time figuring out what to put on my calendar or TO-DO list. For the most part my thinking at the time was “TO-DO now, calendar later, text notes a lot later”. My calendar started getting too full and I kept missing important things I needed to do since they were schedule the same day as mundane things and I didn’t have an obvious way to prioritize them. I tried color coding events, but even that became it’s own task too. So I starting making sure that anything I couldn’t do now, or had set dates, be calendar items, similar to a prioritization square. The text files weren’t great and was more or less digital hoarding. I’d have a pile of all this great information, but didn’t have any plan (or time) to go through them.

Since I had a lot going on at the time, this type of planning was kind of heavy handed, but helped prevent me from missing things, but also lead to me burning out once I neared graduation.

When I started working full time, a large portion of my day was just that, work. So all the side things I thought I could get done quick would have to wait till after work. But by then I was already beat for the day and would try to schedule it instead. This was a vicious cycle for a while till I realized a lot of the things I planned to do I probably didn’t need to do at all, or would come up on their own when it was important. This also aligned with a few (1, 2) other tips I heard.

Currently I go back and forth a bit between Calendar scheduling or Keep notes, but I don’t keep text files anymore, and I don’t “over-plan” things how I used to. If it’s important, I’ll probably remember it and get it done, or something will remind me to do it. If it’s not important, then I probably don’t need to do it, so I should just relax.