Experiment Log – 006 | Weekly Planning using Digital Tools
My previous experiment was about weekly planning using pen and paper, mainly using a Bullet Journal. This experiment is about weekly planning using digital tools.
Why not continue weekly planning with pen and paper?
One of my issues with using my Bullet Journal for weekly planning was that I felt like I was wasting paper with the Weekly Log pages. The reason I felt like it was a waste of paper was because a weekly plan is just that, a plan. It is not a record of what really happened during that week. For the true record of events that happened during a week, I can look at my Daily Log pages. The Daily Log pages I want to save. The Weekly Log pages? Not so much.
For the same reason as above, I don't think I can use a separate Planner notebook. I'll run into the same issue of feeling like it is a waste of paper. Also, I think it looks weird to have two notebooks (three, if you add my Work Journal) open at my desk while I'm trying to migrate planned tasks to my Daily Log page.
So, I'm going to try a number digital tools for weekly planning.
Weekly Planning using Email
I'll try using email to do my weekly plan. Basically, I'll create the weekly plan and then send it to myself in an email. Cal Newport does something similar except he uses it for his daily planning. I'm curious to see if this is a good way to do weekly plans.
Weekly Planning using Notes app
I'll try using Note apps on my phone for creating my weekly plans. For this I have two options: there is the Notes app that comes on my iPhone and the OneNote app from Microsoft.
Weekly Planning using Digital Calendars
Lastly, I'll try using digital calendars for my weekly planning. I also have two options for this: the Calendar app that comes on my iPhone and an Outlook calendar from my email account.
I've been hesitant to use digital calendars for weekly planning because I feel like they are too rigid. By that I mean, to record a task you have to pick a start and end time. I don't like that, it makes it complicated. I just want to have a list of tasks that need to be done on a certain day. I don't really care about the start and end time because I'm not really trying to stick to a fixed schedule. Anyway, I'll still give it a try and see how it goes.
Timeline
I'll let this experiment run for at least a month. I'll need to try weekly planning with those different tools a few times to really get a feel for them. I'll check back in when I'm ready.
Update:
Experiment Log – 006 | Weekly Planning using Digital Tools Results
Tags: #ExperimentLog #WeeklyPlanning