During middle school we were given, and required to bring everyday, a daily planner. They would make us write down important dates like school assemblies, project due dates, etc. 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. A daily planner was also given (but not required) in high school. 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 their calendar dates.

Later in high school my parents gave a basic free flip models, and for a while a Samsung Blackjack (till the charging port broke). Having this on me all the time gave me another way to take notes whenever and where ever. Since they didn’t have a Notes app, 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 was that I’d now have to manage notes from three different sources: notepad, dry erase calendar, and phone.

This continued until junior college when I started using G-Suite apps more. I still had a basic phone, but now I also had a laptop with me through out the day. For a bit 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-term outages (2-4 days) so I’d move over to Evernote. I’d enjoy all the extra features for a while, try to push them a bit more, and be disappointed with what I couldn’t do. Then when I’d go back to Keep and be satisfied with it’s simplicity, but still 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 and make use of it.

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 (one, two) 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.