Why Use a Paper Planner in 2024?

5 Reasons Going Old-School Works Better Than Digital Tools

First, our new collection at Simplified is here! Planners! Journals! Notepads! Even FELT-TIPPED PENS! We cannot wait for you to find your favorite new products in beautiful prints and colors.

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Ever since I created the first Simplified Planner, I’ve answered the same question over and over again:

Why should I write things down in a paper planner when SO many great calendar apps exist?

This is a fair question for sure! And I totally get it. For me, I’ve found benefits in using a paper and digital calendar together (I talked about this on The Simplified Podcast, in Episode 29, if you’d like to go back and listen to how I use these tools together). There’s no question that digital calendars and other tools help me collaborate with other people, which is necessary in so many of our work and home lives.

But when it comes to getting the logistics of my life in order? Seeing at a glance all the things I need to do in a day? For me, it’ll be a paper planner every time.

I love feeling like I’m in control when I sit down with a paper and pencil. I’m not relying on technology or software, and I’m able to see everything right in front of me in a very black and white way.

Statistically, most people pick up a paper planner when they’re in a busy season: moving, starting a new school year, taking on a new job. They hope to find a simple, tactical solution to help them weather the busy season ahead.

Apparently, it’s a solution that many people are turning to paper planners for. According to Business Research Insights, in 2022 the planner market was estimated to be worth $1.02 billion in 2022 and grow to more than $1.472 billion by 2030s. And a 2019 survey conducted by the Paper and Packaging Board found that 64% of millennials prefer paper and pen to digital tools for keeping organized and planning their lives.

So are paper planners the simple solution to quell the chaos? They can be! Here are five advantages paper planners have over their digital counterparts:

🧠 Number 1: Paper planners enhance your memory and creativity.

Many studies report that you remember things better when you write them down—way more than if you typed the same message on a keyboard. Why is that?

According to a 2021 study by the University of Tokyo, when you write something longhand, that action triggers the part of your brain involved in learning and memory. When you type something on a keyboard or mobile device, you’re not triggering your brain’s learning and memory space the way you do when you write with a pencil or pen.

And here’s another cool thing: research suggests that physically writing something down enhances your creativity and improves your comprehension.

I have a friend who worked for a hot minute as a wine blogger. Her editor would ask her to try different bottles of wine, and she’d write about them the way wine people only can: “I’m detecting white peaches and freesias on the nose,” and “It’s a light-bodied white with a long finish.” That sort of thing.

Well, you can imagine that someone who’s supposed to try a lot of different wines might have a hard time keeping them all straight. And that was true for her—to a point.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” she says. “When I’m in a restaurant having a glass of wine, I think to myself, Oh, that’s really good, and just move on. Unless that wine is truly extraordinary, I’m not going to remember it. But for every wine I’ve written about, I swear, it’s like my brain has created a card catalog entry for that wine. Even if it was just average, I can remember what the bottle looked like, how the wine tasted, what I liked about it, what I didn’t. I can even see the handwritten notes I scrawled into the notebook I used to carry around with me when I wrote about wine. It’s so weird.”

Isn’t that funny? When it comes to my planner, I can see what she’s talking about. I can start the week with a mental checklist of things I need to do and the appointments I have. But unless I write them down, I can’t really see them in my head—and I certainly don’t remember them.

One reason your brain can “see” what you’ve written down in your memory—more than “seeing” what something looks like on a webpage—is because webpages are built on scrolling. According to that same study by the University of Tokyo, scrolling is something your brain isn’t able to capture into its memory bank. But with paper planners, your brain can take a mental snapshot of the data, because it’s spending much more time there.

🔎 Number 2: Paper planners minimize distractions.

The average smartphone user receives 46 push notifications per day. 46! That’s a lot of interruptions throughout your day. But you know where push notifications don’t appear? Inside your paper planner.

This comes in handy when you’re sitting down for an intensive planning session. Mine is usually at the beginning of the week, on Sundays. If I have my computer open and I’m trying to plan things out, then guess what? I’m going to get an email, or I’m going to get a text, or I’m going to look up a question and get swallowed into a Google rabbit hole. It’s just inevitable. And that’s something that’s really hard for your brain to recover from.

There’s actually a name for that: it’s called “context switching.” While the term may be new to you, I can assure you that you’ve experienced the fallout of context switching many, many times. I’m sure you’ve found yourself multi-tasking more times than you can count. Have you ever thought to yourself, I wish I could do just one thing at a time. I’d be so much better if I didn’t have everything coming at me all at once, like a firehose.

Do you know why you feel that way?

Because your brain isn’t made to do multiple things at once. It’s not supposed to be switching between tasks every few minutes.

You know what’s funny? We actually had to learn this lesson from computers before we ever figured it out for humans.

When computer scientists were developing computers back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, they noticed that asking the computer to switch what it was doing—going from one kind of task to another—really burdened the computer’s CPU. It slowed down exponentially. These computer scientists found if you asked the computer to do the same task over and over again, it was fine. But as soon as you asked it to do a completely different task, it slowed down.

The same concept holds true for you, too.

• In a study on academic achievement and study habits, over 70% of students who used paper planners reported feeling more in control and less stressed about their academic commitments compared to their peers using digital planners.

• According to a 2020 workplace productivity survey, 54% of professionals prefer using physical paper for planning and task management in the workplace over digital alternatives.

I can see why this is.

Say you work in an office. You’ve got tons of different tasks you’re supposed to do in a day: fielding emails, working on projects, going on Zoom calls, chatting on Slack, mentoring junior staff, checking someone’s work, generating your own work. It’s a lot.

Did you know that the average office worker is switching tasks every six minutes? That’s a lot for your brain to process. And the thing is, when you do switch to another task, it’s hard to get going in a real way on the new task because your brain is still processing the old task you just abandoned. Scientists call that “attention residue.”

Do you feel fried at the end of the day? That’s probably why. You had to wade through a lot of attention residue.

I know paper planners aren’t the silver bullet to conquering context switching—but they can sure help.

For instance, if you have a daily Simplified Planner, write down a schedule you think you can keep hour by hour throughout your day—and try to stick with it. You may have to switch gears at some point, because life happens. But try and see if you can really be present with the task at hand. If your job allows it, try to check email a little less: maybe a few times a day instead of just having it open all the time with notifications popping in. Give it a shot and see what happens.

📝 Number 3: Paper planners give you a way to personalize your info (that only you control!).

Do you write things down in your own shorthand? Do you have a special way to mark the priorities that have to get done today, or a way you mark birthdays or special days?

There’s a reason why you remember those things as well as you do—it’s because you’ve personalized your planning system. That kind of personalization is food for the memory part of your brain — and not easily replicated by a digital planning system.

For all my fellow Type-A control freaks out there, I know this is something you’ll identify with as deeply as I do. I do my day-to-day planning in a daily Simplified Planner, and I do my meal planning in a weekly Simplified planner.

For my family, I’ve been known to put one of our weekly Dry Erase Magnets on the fridge and write out the dinners planned for the week ahead, just so everybody knows what’s on the menu this week (and to minimize the, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” question I tend to get if the menu isn’t up).

Here’s the thing: I live in a house with four other people and one dog. The odds are that someone, even if it’s an accident, might erase what’s on the fridge. How? Who knows. It could be leaning against the fridge, or waving a hand over it while they absentmindedly look through the fridge. I dunno—Murphy’s Law says if I don’t want it to get erased, then it’ll probably get erased. Except—guess what? That menu doesn’t just live on the dry erase magnet. It also lives in my Simplified weekly paper planner—AKA the planner that only I have access to.

Have you ever had a meeting or an appointment magically disappear from your online calendar, but you weren’t quite sure why? Me too. Do you know what doesn’t disappear from your paper calendar? Anything you didn’t erase yourself with an actual eraser. Just sayin’.

🤝 Number 4: A paper planner helps you establish boundaries between work and life.

Nothing forces you to be in the present more than using analog tools. Here’s what I mean by that: when you were little, did you ever watch the way your parents handled work? If your parents worked in a place outside the home—which, honestly, was just about everyone’s parents in the ‘80s and ‘90s—how often did you see them bring work home? Probably not very much.

In some ways—a lot of ways—work was a little more cut and dried back then, because by the sheer physical nature of it, it had to be. There were huge barriers between life and work. Work happened at the workplace; home happened at home. The only time your parents talked to someone from work while they were at home is if the phone rang or if that person physically stopped by.

Now, life and work can happen just about anywhere together. Having the option to work out of my home is wonderful. But sometimes, I need just a little physical separation from work—just a little. Having a paper planner does that for me, because guess what? If I leave my planner at home while we decide to go out to dinner as a family, that means I can’t do meaningful work while I’m away from my desk. And that’s good.

When you’re carrying your to-do list around with you, it goes with you wherever you go. But sometimes, you just need a break. Leave your planner at your desk while you enjoy your well-earned rest.

🎉 Number 5: A paper planner is reliable and easy (and fun!) to use.

It sounds small, but it’s a big thing for me: using a paper planner offers tactile satisfaction that digital versions can't match. Our bodies enjoy this textured connection to our brains. It’s why even though I enjoy racing through an audiobook, there’s nothing like holding a book in my hands. Plus, there’s something to be said for a planning solution that doesn’t require a scramble to connect to WiFi.

And here’s my #1 pro tip for using a paper planner: for best results, use it consistently.

It doesn’t matter how pretty the cover is, or how simple the interior is: if you don’t crack open your planner and use it, none of this stuff matters. Your intentions and purchase don’t matter without any follow-through (as someone who loves to purchase her way out of a problem, I typed this and thought, Ouch. Because I see myself in that statement).

🧵 How has using a paper planner improved your life? I’m looking for all the pro tips I can get!

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