As a self-proclaimed geek and gadget lover I have always used gadgets to manage my time. All of my phones since around 2002 have had usable calendars and organisers, which I have always used because they were convenient and I always had my phone on me.
I have also however had the joy of trying to synchronise all these devices into different desktop systems, which is not as easy as it sounds. Synchronising one device with one computer is relatively easy, but add any more devices, or other computers, and the number of problems you will experience increases exponentially. The number of times I have had to save my calendar and contacts by trawling through them and removing duplicates is more than I care to remember.
Electronic devices like this are supposed to be making our lives simpler, but instead they are introducing their own complications and problems. So I had the idea recently of getting rid of all of this complication, and working purely on paper for organising myself. I bought myself an organiser and dug out my favourite fountain pen from my school days, and started copying all my appointments and my important phone numbers into it.
Initially I wasn't sure how well it was going to work. I like the ability to set alerts and recurring appointments when I am using Outlook at work, and I like the ability to add people to events and have them confirm or deny their attendance. But I realised that, although I liked these features, I wither didn't use them as much as I thought, or the people I was organising meetings with didn't use them either.
As it turns out, having a notepad, day planner and contact list in one file makes it a lot easier to keep track of what I'm doing over the week. I use the A-Z organiser dividers to group projects and companies together, and make use of the notes pages to keep track of everything I need to remember about that company/project. The contact sheets mean I can keep contact details with the projects, and I can find everything within a few seconds.
I wasn't sure how much difference it would make, using a planner instead of Outlook, but being able to use it when I'm not near a computer, and being able to make notes in it faster than on a screen, have made me feel a lot more productive.
