I’ve been rethinking how I’m running my life over the last few weeks and switched my to do system to a physical notebook. This hasn’t worked out as I thought and I’ve discovered where technology really beats pen and paper (for me).

A reminder of things

I’ve been trying my best to change some bad habits and had previously been using Streaks to do this. I moved my habits into a simple grid on paper but there’s a problem, I forgot what I was trying to improve. Having a reminder on my iPhone I.e. a widget on my Home Screen that I saw every time I unlocked my iPhone was helping me. Since pen and paper I’ve taken a step back. I’ll be moving back to streaks to track these.

Notifications

I used pen and paper as my daily list and whilst it worked when I had my day job (I was at my desk with my notebook) it doesn’t work at home. My notebook isn’t always with me and it won’t ping me to tell me to do something. Having a notification across my devices is the extra push I needed to remember things most important.

Back to an app

I think I’ll stick to paper for gratitude journaling but switch back to an app for the rest. This’ll be one for habits (streaks) and a simple app for my to do (?).

Having taken this step back it’s been good to have that reminder of why I use a to do app. If you’re struggling too on this try the same method and let me know where you end up.