With the popularity of apps and digital calendars on the rise, you might wonder about the continuing usefulness of printable calendars. However, there are still some good reasons to use pens and paper calendars to keep track of your daily tasks.
Writing Tasks Down Helps You Remember
Writing down upcoming tasks and what you need to get done on a printed calendar will help ensure they get completed. Many studies have shown a definitive link between writing something down and more firmly establishing that idea in your head. This helps you better remember the things you need to do and increases the likelihood of them being completed.
This applies even more strongly to physically writing something down, which gives printed calendars an advantage over digital ones. For reasons scientists have yet to fully understand, notes written down by hand seem to be more effective at helping you retain information than typed ones do. You also don’t have to worry about your expensive electronics getting lost or damaged as you go about your day.
They Can Be Customized
A printable calendar can be customized to come preprinted with events or tasks everyone needs to know about. They can also be designed in any combination of colors imaginable and have different borders or pictures. You can even upload your own photos to give your printed calendar the most personalized appearance.
This will make sure everyone in your family or everyone at your business has the same events written on their calendars. When everyone is responsible for his or her own calendar, whether digital or printed, they may forget to write important things down. Of course, you can customize a calendar just for yourself too.
Personal Preference
Keeping your schedule on a physical, printed calendar may simply be your preference as opposed to digital options. Everyone has their own preferences and what works for someone may not work well for someone else. Technology may be too distracting for you or you may simply work better keeping your schedule with pen and paper rather than a smartphone or computer.
Because of this, it is recommended that you try different options for keeping your schedule organized before deciding on the one that works the best for you. You can even use a combination of different ideas and tools to help keep yourself focused and organized.
It Can Be Your Calendar and Yours Alone
You may have a digital calendar you use in conjunction with other employees at your company. This can get overwhelming and your own to-do list can get lost in what others need to accomplish. A printed calendar can be yours and yours alone. No one else needs to see it or be able to make changes to it.
This prevents others from interfering with your plans or judging you on how you like to operate. It is also helpful if you don’t want certain individuals to know your plans. If this calendar is for keeping track of your personal life, you can suggest that other members of your family try the same idea to keep their own personal lives organized.
You Have A History
Having a physical, printed calendar gives you an easy way of looking back over the previous days to see what you accomplished. This can be more difficult for digital calendars with daily to-do lists because they often only display the current day or the current week.
A physical calendar can also help you detect patterns more easily or notice if something was not done. Looking back over your calendars to notice patters can be very helpful for self-improvement. You can discover where you might be coming up short and what tasks need more of your time. You can then compensate in the future. For this reason, printed calendars can serve an important purpose in bettering time management skills.
It’s Low Or No Cost
There are plenty of free printable calendars out there for you to choose from and use. This makes it a much cheaper alternative to expensive software or apps, like Microsoft Outlook. That’s not to mention the cost of a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone if you are still using a desktop.
Some templates or printing services may cost money, but the cost is often low. This makes printable calendars not only convenient but easy on your budget too. You don’t need fancy, expensive technology to use printed calendars – all you need is a pen and some paper.
How To Organize Your Tasks
Aside from writing them down, there are a number of other ways you can organize your tasks. The first and perhaps most important is prioritization. The ability to prioritize your tasks is essential so important things such as deadlines and urgent business get addressed first.
Of course, you will need to leave some time each day for unexpected occurrences or emergencies. It can be wise to take a small amount of time at the end of each day to plan out the next day. You can put the calendar in a place where you are more likely to see it, such as on a wall or on your desk, so you stay on track.
Printable calendars can help you keep your schedule organized and share set schedules with a larger group of people. There are plenty of templates available on the Internet, and it is easy to make your own via programs as varied as Microsoft Word to more specialized programs for calendar design. Print calendars can still be very useful, so people should not discount them.
