photo credit: Matthew Oliphant

When choosing between computer and paper-based planners, here are a few things to consider:

How often are you on the computer? If you use a computer or smartphone for most of your daily tasks and activities a software based planning system is an option for you.

Are you willing to invest?
Software Investment
$$$- There are tons of great freeware options available but many of them are standalone. In other words, they only provide one function like calendaring, or email or tasks, etc. If you are a small business owner that relies on your planner, email and to-do list, I highly recommend investing in an integrated personal information manager like MS Outlook, Entourage, or Sage’s ACT. The stand-alone price for MS Outlook 2007 is $109.95 and the MS Office Suite ranges from $149-$679 (you could probably do well with the comprehensive small business version which includes word processing, spreadsheet, personal information manager, presentation, desktop publishing and accounting programs). There are also industry specific tools like Top Producer for real estate agents.

Time- I highly urge you to invest some time into learning your system. If you don’t understand it, it won’t facilitate the process and in a few months your software or smartphone will have become another expensive item in the gadget graveyard. I guarantee that if you take the time to learn what you need, you will get a high return on your investment.

Smartphone Investment
$$$- If you are going to use software to manage this information, consider where you do your scheduling. For example, if you work a 9-5 job and mostly schedule appointments at your computer at work and events and limited appointments at home, it makes sense to use software at work and a paper calendar at home. However, I find that it is not frequently the case any longer that our work and home lives don’t overlap. And if you are an entrepreneur, small business owner, or real estate agent, there is constant overlap. You may also want to invest in a smartphone that can sync with your computer, which can range from $99- $400 depending on features, service, discounts and area.

Time- Take the time to MAP it out, Make A Plan! Believe me, I am familiar with the urge to just jump in and do it- and I believe it is a recipe for disaster (ok, maybe I’m being a little dramatic here). If you don’t take the time to research your options and make the right purchase for your lifestyle, personality and preferences, you will be in the red on this investment. What features do you need? Which ones would be nice to have? Ask friends and family about there software and smartphones, but dig past emotions and get the facts. What features and functions do they like and dislike?

What You’ll Love
I love the fact that you can easily see your tasks and appointments in the context of a day, week, month, year, or desired date range. If you receive an email re: an appointment, you can simply drag it into your calendar and create an appointment from the email. Then, when you are on the road, you can view the details of the email from your smartphone. You can link appointments to contacts for quick and easy access which works great for conference calls, etc. Of course, you can set up reminders for appointments and tasks which will sync to your smartphone. You can also easily set up recurring or repeating events, i.e. first monday of the month, every 4th thursday, every

Challenges- One of the challenges to using a computer based planning system is mobility. Syncing with a smartphone will help alleviate this challenge. However, mobile data entry can pose a problem for some, especially when information is thrown at you quicker than you can enter it. It is helpful to note that not all smartphones offer the same features. If you haven’t already done so, checkout my free Productivity Toolkit E-course (Look for the signup in the orange box in the top right corner…). In session four, I provide a more detailed overview of smartphone and functionality. For example, some have touchscreens and a stylus, while others like the Motorola Q does not; some have QWERTY keyboards; some are pc based, and so on.

Check back for more info on paper-based planners…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 8:25 am and is filed under Organize your Bytes, Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.