Paper for Brainstorming Beats Digital

Podcast 405

"Pen and paper will solve almost anything. Or at least start the process."

- Nicholas Bate

This week, I have a special episode for you about what I have discovered over the last two years from bringing pens and paper back into my productivity system. It’s certainly been an eye-opener for me. 

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Script | 405

Hello, and welcome to episode 405 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. 

A week ago, I launched a brand new course called the Hybrid Productivity Course. The purpose of this course was to help those who have found that a digital-only approach has led to a loss of focus on what’s important and a sense of extreme overwhelm and distraction. 

As in most areas of life, a one-size-fits-all methodology rarely works. All humans are unique. We think differently, have different life experiences, grow up differently and experience life through many different cultures. 

It stands to reason that none of us will have exactly the same needs as everyone else. 

We saw this during the pandemic. Around 50% of people loved working from home. They thrived and became much more productive. The other 50% struggled, found it hard to do their work, and lost their enthusiasm and energy for it. 

This highlighted the difference between extroverts and introverts. Extroverts bounce off the energy of other people. They need the bustling office environment to operate. Take that away, and they slump. 

Introverts, on the other hand, thrive in the opposite conditions. Quiet spaces and solo environments are where they thrive. 

I always struggled in an office environment. I found it difficult to concentrate and focus. When I began working from home in 2015, my productivity went through the roof. I suddenly had the freedom to work when I liked, where I liked and in the quiet solitude of my front living room. 

One advantage of an all-digital system is that you can easily add many features to your digital tools without much thought. 

I noticed this while testing Todoist’s new feature, Ramble. Ramble lets you have a conversation with Todoist, and it pulls out all the things you indicate need to be done. Sounds great in theory, until you test it out. 

Just a two-minute “conversation” with Ramble led to 15 tasks! 

When I went back into my inbox to sort them out, I realised that the majority of those tasks were low-value, would-be-nice-to-do tasks, but realistically, there was no way I would have the time to do them. 

I edited down that list of 15 to 6 tasks. 

The problem is that most people will not edit these lists. It’s time-consuming, and you have to think it through. Two things that are out of fashion these days, it seems.

This is where I found bringing a pen and notebook back into my system really helped. It forced me to edit down my list of tasks for the day. It also made me smarter when writing my lists. 

If I had five people to call today, in the digital system, I would write out all five calls independently. It didn’t take long, and most of those would already be in the digital system. All I had to do was add a date. 

In a paper system, it would mean writing out all those calls individually. You soon find that rather than doing that, you would write “do my calls”. Writing those three words strangely reinforced the action. All you then needed to do was to ensure that any communication tasks were correctly labelled in your digital system. 

This is where the seeds of a hybrid system began to take shape. 

If it were easier to collect using digital tools, then why stop doing it that way?

If you were more focused when writing out a daily to-do list than using a digital to-do list, why stop doing that? 

My idea was to marry the two. 

This led to the development of what I call my Day Book. However, before I got there, I went back to my roots and used the Franklin Planner for eighteen months. 

The strength of the Franklin Planner is in the way the daily pages are laid out. You have your daily prioritised task list on the left, your calendar for the day next to it, and, on the right page, a place to keep notes and ideas. 

This means that once you have written your appointments, you can see how much time you have available to do tasks. It forces you to be realistic. 

If you had seven hours of meetings and began writing out a long list of tasks, you would instantly see that you were creating an impossible day. 

If you were to consider meeting overruns, the “urgent” messages and “quick questions” that will inevitably come your way that day, it’s likely you won’t be doing any tasks. 

Yet the digital system won’t show you that. All it shows you are the tasks you have dated for today. 

And let’s be honest, most people are adding dates to tasks, not because they need to be done that day, but because they are afraid they will forget about them or they will get lost in the system. 

That’s not how a to-do list is meant to work. It’s meant to give you a clear indication of what needs to be done. On a day-to-day basis, that means what needs to be done today. 

The act of writing down on a piece of paper the tasks that need to be done today forces you to be realistic. 

When it comes to storage, though, paper is not so great. It’s here where digital tools shine. You can easily store files and documents. You can keep meeting notes together in one place and create a master project note for all your projects, so everything is kept together in one convenient place. 

And of course, digital’s piece de resistance, search. 

If you were to keep all your notes in notebooks, you would soon have notebooks all over the place, and notes would be difficult to find unless you carefully indexed every notebook you used. Perhaps not the best use of your time. 

Instead, you can keep all your notes in a notes app, and allow it to use keywords, date ranges or titles to find what you need when you need it. 

However, I have discovered that paper is a great planning medium. This is where I always used to struggle. 

When I first began teaching, there were no such things as Evernote or Apple Notes. They didn’t come along until five years after I began teaching. I therefore used my old counsel notebooks. These were what would be described as foolscap in size, slightly taller than A4, and had a royal blue cover. 

Given that throughout my school and university days, I would always plan out my essays on paper, it was perfectly natural for me to make notes on paper when planning my lessons.

Then we had the digital explosion. Smartphones became a thing, followed shortly afterwards by apps. I began using Evernote in 2009, and I started planning digitally. 

It was certainly convenient, but I did notice I rarely went into any depth. I tried using mind-mapping software, but it didn’t help. 

I thought there must be something wrong with me. 

Then, a couple of years ago, I began seeing studies about how our brains work differently between digital and physical tools. 

The most striking studies found that when you write on paper (or a whiteboard), you activate the same areas that artists activate when creating art. This is the creative centre of your brain. 

When you tap on a keyboard, you don’t. Tapping is formulaic and monotonous.

If you think about this, it makes perfect sense. When you handwrite, you are forming shapes. Letters are shapes. When you write via keyboard, all you are doing is tapping. There’s nothing artistic about that. 

This was when the penny finally dropped for me. There was nothing wrong with me! It was science. 

Now, I would never consider opening up my phone or laptop to sketch out an idea. I would open a notebook. 

One of my favourite ways of doing this is to grab a notebook, a few pens and a pencil and head off to a local cafe for an hour or two. I can sit in a corner and brainstorm ideas for new courses, YouTube videos and blog posts. 

Since I began doing this, my productivity has improved significantly. It helped because I have fewer re-edits to do. When I sit down at the computer to write, I now have a fully planned-out structure and well-thought-through points, and I am writing the first draft much faster.

It seems that planning works best on paper, yet storage and output are best digital. Again, leading to the conclusion that there is a place for both digital and analogue tools in a solid productivity system. 

I saw this all in action recently. I was watching a UK Supreme Court session, where a barrister (a lawyer who speaks before a judge, not someone who makes coffee) had an iPad in front of him containing all the case files and documents. Yet his speaking notes were on paper. As he made his arguments before the judge, he marked off the points with a pencil and added notes. 

The opposing barrister was also using the same tools. Her case files were on an iPad, yet as she listened to her opposite number, she was taking notes in a notebook and appeared to be adding revisions to her own speaking notes. 

What’s more, if we’re being honest, stationery is much more fun than digital tools. Digital fonts, screens and keyboards are not really all that exciting. 

But the many different types of pens, pencils, notebooks, and pencil cases at all different price ranges give you the ultimate way to make your tools truly personal. 

I’m sure you already know I love fountain pens. I’ve been writing with them since middle school and just love the way the nib feels on a quality sheet of paper. 

I remember being excited when Apple brought out the Apple Pencil. When I got one, and tried it out I was horrified. It was the worst writing experience I’d ever had. I’ve tried Paperlike and tested a Remarkable. Yuk! None of them comes close to the experience you get from a real pen and paper. 

And so, after two years of testing, playing and refining, I came up with what I would describe as the “perfect” system. A method that marries the power of digital with analogue tools. 

Digital for storage and output, paper for planning and thinking. 

It works. I tested it with some of my coaching clients, and even my wife has started using it for her university studies. 

What’s more, it works superbly with the Time Sector System. You keep all your tasks in your digital task manager, and only when you decide to do them, you put them on paper. 

What you will discover immediately is that you are no longer staring at an almost infinite list of things you could do, and instead, you see a list of genuine tasks that need to be done today. No more overwhelm, just a focused list and a realistic day. 

If you are interested in learning more about this course, I will put a link in the show notes. Currently, you can get the course with the early-bird discount for just $49.95. 

But if you’re not interested, try using a notebook for your planning and daily task list this week. Watch what happens to your productivity. 

Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.