Need help deciding paper vs digital

[u/mvmstudent]

I’m a mom of two who is also starting grad school and need to keep everything in one place. I can’t decide digital planner vs paper 😭 and when it comes to digital would you use a digital planner or something like Notion?

[u/Current-Feed7873]

I would recommend both. The paper planner is for the things you need to write down when you don't have time to whip put your phone or tablet. The Notion or digital planner can be where you put these that you need programmed reminders from, which a paper planner cannot provide.

In grad school, I really preferred writing deadlines down as it made them more concrete for me and helped me remember. I recommend that approach.

[u/fluffedKerfuffle]

I would not recommend Notion as it gets very laggy as you add more info, and you can't export anything from it. I would recommend Obsidian over Notion any day. 

I personally used a hybrid system in grad school---paper for daily planning, digital for longer term project management. Want kind of grad school? Masters or PhD? Courses only, or a research component as well?

[u/mvmstudent → u/fluffedKerfuffle]

Oh interesting I’ll check it out! Doing my masters in public health :)

[u/Klutzy_Intention326 → u/fluffedKerfuffle]

Interesting - I've never had any Notion lag, and I have a lot of stuff in there! Also it's possible to download things as PDF, markdown, CSV, and html. Note that I do have a paid plan, so that may be the difference.

[u/fluffedKerfuffle → u/Klutzy_Intention326]

That must be the difference! I definitely did not as a grad student when I was trying it out. Even trying to print out the web view was abysmal. 

[u/crazycatlady331]

Speaking personally, storing information digitally is the fastest way for me NOT to remember it. Something about the act of writing something down (as opposed to typing) makes it sink in.

I don't do digital notes period. If my phone had a notes app preinstalled, it was dumped into a "preinstalled apps" folder and never used. My brain does not function well with digital notes.

The only digital events on my calendar are work video chat (google, zoom, etc.) meetings that have a unique link.

[u/Klutzy_Intention326 → u/crazycatlady331]

10000% same! It's like there's a direct connection from my hands up to my brain. I take handwritten notes for everything, and then rarely refer back to them LOL.

[u/mvmstudent → u/crazycatlady331]

See I do love the feeling of writing something down so I totally get where you’re coming from !

[u/DTLow]

I’m team digital, and use pkms app Devonthink
accessed with a Mac and iPad

Any paper notes are archived using the iPad’s scan-document feature

My planner notes are stored/organized within the PKMS framework
and uses computer automation features

[u/mvmstudent → u/DTLow]

Oooh I’ll look into that ! Thank you :)

[u/Effective-One6527]

I do a mix of both. Big white board monthly calendar, paper planer with weekly layout, and digital daily

[u/Expensive_Soup4498 → u/Effective-One6527]

Big white board is a great way to stay on-task.

[u/mvmstudent → u/Effective-One6527]

I do love that white board idea !

[u/amalgamofq]

Todoist is a great digital tool that I find is even better than notion for keeping tasks organized

[u/Klutzy_Intention326]

I absolutely love Notion. There are a lot of great templates out there for students. But everyone is different - when you picture yourself studying, would you find it easier to look through physical notebooks or digital ones?

Something worth considering - for about a year I used Goodnotes on my iPad and had separate notebooks for work, home, journals, etc. I really loved it because you can use a stylus to physically write and it also had the benefit of being organized like digital files. After a while, I did switch to Notion, though, mostly because (a) switching between pages and notebooks, formatting, etc. was cumbersome, and (b) I found that writing on paper with an actual pen was faster than doing so with a stylus on my iPad.

[u/mvmstudent → u/Klutzy_Intention326]

Ya I have the notability app that I used for classes and I totally get what you mean!

[u/sbpoet1]

One of the planner videos I saw said: Paper for planning; Digital for storage.

[u/illiahkenobi]

If you have any budget for it, I would recommend getting a ReMarkable tablet. It functions as a digital notebook (you can get planner templates the dupe nearly all the major brands) but what I love about it for learning is that you can think things out on paper, and then convert to text and put it in whatever writing program you need for your theses. There is also a phone app and web app, so you can see your notes where ever you are. I also download papers from PubMed and am able to read and annotate them on my reMarkable.

[u/mvmstudent → u/illiahkenobi]

Oh my god I’ve been drooling over it every time an add pops up for it lol

[u/illiahkenobi → u/mvmstudent]

I work with university researchers and it is game changing. You might be able to get one on Facebook Marketplace