Digital isn’t the only answer.

When you have a ton of deadlines that cross each other you learn to adapt. That adaptation can take funny forms.

I use Google Calendar for all my schedules. I have Google calendars I make to schedule every project that I share with any collaborators. I keep my personal schedule updated with everything I do that can at all be scheduled. It’s glorious. It’s very busy, lots of colors, and it keeps me n track. I have a widget to show me my upcoming events on my phone, every time I look at it, and I keep it open in windows at my desk. My calendar is my life, these days.

Except it isn’t enough. You see, outside of just events I also have deadlines that can’t be put into a calendar the same. I can’t put a deadline into a calendar for three months from now and feel the weight of it every day. I can make a To-do but Google’s sucks mostly and, frankly, pretty much all of them suck. They don’t tell me enough, in the way I need.

I need to know what I need to work on every day, when stuff has been half done and needs to be pulled forward or put on the back burner or will intersect with something else. I needed… something. A pad of paper!

Except then everything gets lost. I jot down stuff for Weds, and then Thurs and then Weds again and where’d it go? No. So I thought about a paper planner. And I looked and there were a host. All of them these nice 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 jobs.

Eh, felt too small. I like to write notes to myself too about whatever I’m working on. So I found a nice one that took 8 1/2 x 11 pages and ordered some Two-Page-Per-Day calendar sheets and there we go.

And now I have a big brown leather briefcase looking thing. And it tells me what I’ll be working on tonight when I get home, and what I need to work on after dinner and notes for each. And if I don’t finish one of them, I will write it down for the next day. I will also, tonight, write down what I need to work on tomorrow.

See it isn’t a book that needs to come with me to the day job, or needs to move around much at all. I might take it to some meetings but most of those are on the phone these days anyway. So I just need a big book that becomes a temp, ever-shifting, out-board brain for me.

All of this is a long way of saying:

“Sometimes the best solution is not to throw technology at a problem but to throw it away from a problem.”

Like all the best technology the trick is knowing when to use it and when not to. For my use, in this case, the best solution happens to be paper and a pen and a binder for some types of events and Google Calendar for other types.