12 reasons why you should plan digitally!

Digital planners are coming to Germany from English-speaking countries and are currently conquering the planning world. Run, you little paper planners, but it won't do you any good!

Whether paper or digital, planners help us manage our time, boost our productivity, and give us a sense of accomplishment. But these things are now increasingly being moved into the digital sphere.

Digital planning can be practiced in a variety of ways. What I'm referring to, however, is planning with digital planners and note-taking apps . My planners are specifically tailored to these applications.

In the last blog post I already told you, What a digital planner is . In this article, you'll learn about the advantages of digital planners over traditional paper planners and why your planning will also benefit enormously from a digital planner.

12 reasons why your planning needs a digital planner!

A digital planner comes with a variety of features that a paper planner can only dream of! Switching from analog to digital may be tricky at first, but your planning will benefit enormously. Here are my 12 reasons why a digital planner is a good choice – let's get started!

Advantages of a digital planner:

1. 🌳 PAPERLESS & SUSTAINABLE

Digital planning saves one thing above all: paper! Digitizing your notes could save this valuable resource. There are now many good note-taking apps that make traditional paper notebooks obsolete and offer great features. Using digital planners reduces paper consumption, promoting more responsible use of this valuable resource.

2. ✂️ FLEXIBLE & ADAPTABLE

With a paper planner, you can quickly reach your limits if you don't like certain sections or want to add more pages. With a digital planner, you can expand your planning infinitely and adjust it at any time. The planner is incredibly flexible and adapts to your needs. Move pages, organize your topics, delete pages you no longer need—the planner gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility.

3. 📱 CROSS-DEVICE USE

You can save your planner in the cloud and sync it with your other devices. Cross-device use definitely makes sense if you want to access your planning on the go. It's now possible to share documents with others and work on them simultaneously (app: GoodNotes). The functionality of note-taking apps is becoming more diverse with each update, and so are the possibilities for using the planner.

4. 🔎 Search function

Be honest: How often do you search for entries you made on a particular page in your paper planner? This won't happen with a digital planner. You can use the note-taking app's search function to filter your notes by search terms. The search function even works for handwriting where the naked eye fails. My boyfriend's handwriting is the best example of how the search function works so well! 😂

5. 🎨 YOUR PLANNER, YOUR CANVAS!

Colorful, vibrant, or more minimalistic – with a digital planner, all design possibilities are open to you, as you can customize it to your liking. Digital stickers are the icing on the cake for digital planning; they simplify your planning and also liven up any planner. You can import fonts of your choice and use them in the planner.

6. 💨 FAST NAVIGATION

Fast, faster, digital planners. With one click, hyperlinks take you to the desired page. These links allow you to navigate through all your notes in a flash. No searching, no annoying scrolling – in digital planning, everything works via swiping, scrolling, or even via hyperlinks. For example, you click on the date in the month view and it opens the day view.

7. 👜 HEAVY LUGGING - BYE, BYE!

Everything you need for your planning is centrally located in one app. This saves you the hassle of lugging around your books and documents. Instead of having multiple separate notebooks lying around on your desk, you can store them all centrally in the app. This is especially useful if you're a teacher or a student trying to organize your time at university. With a digital planner, you can also avoid "forgetting" your tasks at home .

8. 💐 HE FORGIVES YOU FOR MISTAKES

Paper planners are ruthless when we make mistakes. What's left are unsightly correction strips and crossed-out sentences on the paper pages. Even if you don't make a mistake, your schedule can change, and an appointment that now takes place on Saturday instead of Wednesday, as entered, can't simply be rescheduled in a paper planner. With a digital planner, you can! You can copy any content—text, images, etc.—and transfer it to other pages. This feature is simply brilliant! If you use a digital planner, you can erase or undo any mistake—without leaving a trace!

9. ✏️ HANDWRITTEN NOTES

"Writing is remembering." Many studies have proven how important handwritten notes are for our memory. If you have the option to use a pen in your planner, it could be a great learning experience and also a lot of fun. Some apps now offer the function of converting handwriting into text. You can experiment with the pen settings and find a font style that best suits your handwriting. Writing digitally may be unfamiliar at first, but practice makes perfect. Digital diaries are also a great way to get started with digital planning, and writing also has positive effects on our well-being .

10. 🔒 DATA PROTECTION & BACKUPS

You can save your digitized notes in the cloud, create a manual backup, or opt for automatic data backup. I've described how to create an automatic backup using the GoodNotes app here . If you're a teacher and need to store your data in compliance with GDPR, you can learn more about the options for storing sensitive data in this blog post .

11. 🗽 UNLIMITED FREEDOM

Let's say you're a travel-loving, cooking-loving student. As a paper-based planner, you'd have a serious dilemma. Should you choose a semester planner, a cookbook, or a travel planner? Tricky. You could, of course, buy them all, but then you'd have a motley crew of planners. With a digital planner, you can have it all in one. Your hobbies, your job, and your passion all have a place in a digital planner. You can customize it to your liking, the way that best suits you and your lifestyle!

12. ✨ MOTIVATION & INSPIRATION

If you want to improve in certain areas—for example, if you're aiming to improve your time management or productivity—a digital planner can work wonders. Provided you fully embrace this new way of planning, it can be incredibly motivating and inspiring, giving you positive input in your planning areas. We can only work effectively when we do it with enthusiasm. A digital planner can give you back the joy of planning, especially if the paper planner has been lying in the corner for a few weeks or months and you've lost the motivation to work with it.

Disadvantages of digital planning:

I had to dig deep into the cons box to find some. However, for the sake of completeness, I'd like to discuss some of the disadvantages of digital planners here.

1. 🙅‍♀️ FOREVER PAPER

Just because I absolutely love digital planning and believe it's the future of planning doesn't mean you have to. It can be incredibly frustrating to buy a digital planner only to find out you don't like it. To solve this problem, however, I have a free trial planner . Simply download it and try it out for yourself. Many people prefer the feel of paper or simply need longer to get used to the digital version, and that's perfectly fine. Not everyone has to like it, and not everyone can.

2. 🧠 DIGITAL PLANNERS CAN'T THINK

Unfortunately, there's no feature yet that lets your planner remind you of an appointment or let the planner know what day it is. However, I can certainly imagine that the reminder function will come to note-taking apps. You also can't make entries on the monthly page; they'll automatically be transferred to the weekly page. It's important to remember that a digital planner is a PDF file with hyperlinks; it's not a programmed app.

3. 📱 YOU NEED ELECTRICITY

You need battery power! If you run out of power, unfortunately, your planning will run out too. No power – no digital planning. It's that simple. However, if you use your planner across multiple devices, you can switch to the other device. Since the planner is used with note-taking apps, you're also dependent on the capabilities of the applications. App X has more features than App Y.

4. 📖 NO PAPER FEELING

A digital planner can't give you the paper experience you're used to from your paper planners. However, there are tablet covers * that at least give you the feeling of paper. They have a matte finish, mimicking paper. My personal experience, however, is that you quickly get used to writing on a tablet.

5. 🔒 DATA PROTECTION

When storing your own documents, you rely on the protection and reliability of third parties, such as cloud providers and app developers. To use note-taking apps and cloud storage services, your data is stored online. You have to decide for yourself whether you trust such providers/developers or not. Transparency suffers in today's data jungle, but in this blog post about storing sensitive data, I'll provide you with information on how to store your data securely.

6. 💰 COSTS

If you don't have a tablet, it makes sense to get one for a digital planner. You can also use the planner on your phone or PC, but you'll get the most out of it with a device that's compatible with a stylus. You can get excellent note-taking apps for under €10.

Conclusion

Switching from paper to digital won't happen overnight—everything new takes time. Especially if you've cultivated a close bond with your paper planner for years, parting ways can be difficult at first! Give yourself time to get used to your new digital friend.

You don't have to digitize every aspect of your life right away; you can start with small areas. For example, keeping a digital diary or simply using a digital notebook . Take it easy, and if you like digital planning, you can gradually introduce it to other areas as well. With my free test planner, you can get your first planning experience and find out if a digital planner is right for you. Simply download and try it for free. You can read here how to make the easiest transition from analog to digital.

The links marked with an asterisk (*) are affiliate links. If you click on such an affiliate link and make a purchase through that link, I receive a commission from the respective online shop or provider. The price does not change for you.

GoodNotes in my everyday life

If you're interested in how I use GoodNotes to better organize my daily life, feel free to check out my Gamechanger Calendar 2023 or my beloved recipe book 😍