I love combining tech and analog to create custom solutions to fit each person, project, or goal. One place I combine this is when I’m planning, organizing, and managing my life. I use a combination of a tech calendar on my phone and a non-tech physical calendar via my favorite planner, the Laurel Denise planner.
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. I only share products that I personally use, genuinely love, and believe could make your life a little easier or more enjoyable. Thanks for supporting Appmanda—it helps me keep creating content for you!
Why Combining Tech and Analog Planners Work For Me
I know it may seem bananas to combine both a tech planner and analog planner – I mean it sounds like a lot of extra work, right? But for me it works well with how my brain works to help me stay on top of time-sensitive commitments during the day via alerts on my phone, but also to long-plan for commitments in a way that digital calendars don’t allow me to effectively see a good overall view.
I’m a detail-oriented planner-typer personality which means I want to know what’s coming up. I also have a lot going on with all the hats I wear in life: work commitments, family commitments, parenting commitments, etc – just like all of us! – so I have to write everything down either in my phone or my planner otherwise I will forget about it (until I wake up in a panic at 3am wondering if I missed that thing).
Tech Calendars
I utilize the native calendar app on my iPhone and import calendars from multiple sources to the app. There, I can set alerts for time to leave, 1 hour before, 10 minutes before, etc based on what the commitment is and how it impacts my day-to-day flow.
When my husband and I got married, we made an email for all things wedding-related. This email then became our family email address once we were married so all things home management or kids related go to this email account. Naturally, we have come to use this account for our calendars too. By making several calendars on that account we’re able to have a “family calendar” for things that involve the kids or all of us, an “Eddie calendar” for commitments that involve only my husband, an “Amanda calendar” for commitments that involve only me, and even a “dinner” calendar because I was tired of answering the question “what’s for dinner?” a few times a week.
Here we are able to set colors for each calendar so that at a glance I can see the daily breakdown on my phone that Eddie will be working from home XYZ hours, working in the office ABC hours, going to some appointment at a certain time, and more. I can then see where my commitments overlap and we can plan childcare and carline pickups accordingly.
My favorite feature of the digital calendar are the alerts though. I can have a habit of getting locked in and working super hard on something and then I look up and 90 minutes have flown by. Utilizing digital alerts help me keep an eye on what time it is and ensure I don’t miss anything (like a Zoom call or carline pickup) because I’m elbow deep on a project!
This also helps because both my husband and I can see these shared calendars on our phones at any time so we’re not having to ask each other “what day were you meeting with that person again?” or “are you going to be home Friday at 10am?” – we can check the calendar and get the info for ourselves which helps eliminate unnecessary mental workload for the other person.
Laurel Denise Planner
Now if the digital calendar is so great, why bother with a physical planner? Well, I found that getting a bird’s eye view of the week or month isn’t quite so easy for me on a digital calendar. Maybe it works amazing for you, and I’m so glad if that’s the case, but for me once I start putting all the little things onto our digital calendar then every day on my calendar view has a little dot indicating something is happening and it’s just like highlighting the whole page in a text book – when everything is marked then effectively nothing is marked because it’s all the same importance visually.
With a physical planner, I’m better able to plan things out in advance, get that birds’ eye view to ensure I’m not overextending myself, double booking myself, and also ensuring I don’t lose sight of my own goals. (Something I worked hard on in 2024 was not working myself to the bone just because someone asked. Saying no is okay! I want to keep that habit in 2025.)
Due to Laurel Denise’s unique half-page set up I can see the month as a whole where I can note big ticket items like trips, birthdays, doctor appointments, or other not-as-common calendar items and then compare those with the weekly/daily views.
I also can keep a monthly to-do list for those things I need to get done at sometime during the month, but the exact day it happens isn’t super important. Currently this to-do list for January includes things like finding my misplaced library card and making the Valentine’s Day cards I’ll need to have for William’s class in February.
The end of the month’s half-pages also include habit trackers. You can change what you’re tracking each month as your goals progress, but for January I’m tracking water intake, exercise, taking vitamins, intentional connection with family and friends, spiritual time, cleaning, and content creation.
When it comes to setting goals and choosing what habits that I want to track, I try to think of life’s 5 major categories: spiritual, relational, physical, work, and financial.
adapted from the “Better” reading plan by North Point Community Church
My goals and habits I want to track change throughout the year based on what’s going on in my life, what is stressing me out at that time, and what areas I could use some re-focusing to get on track with my longer-term life goals. (Tip: You can also use those 5 major areas to help determine your 5-year and 10-year goals then break those big dream goals into smaller actionable steps.)
Combining the digital and physical planner methods
So some stuff gets written in my phone calendar on the go and some stuff is written in my physical planner – is there ever anything that falls through the cracks as a result? Well, believe it or not – no, that rarely happens.
I try to take some time at the end of the previous week to compare the two, note things that maybe aren’t noted in both – adding any necessary time alerts on my phone calendar, and check in with Eddie to see if there’s anything he’s aware of that I missed. That sounds like a lot, but that part only takes about 5-10 minutes.
When I chat with Eddie during this time, we often discuss dinner plans for the upcoming week and make the matching grocery list – which we can digitally collaborate on together through a (free) shared document that either of us can work from when one of us has time to swing by the grocery store.
Check out the Video Review of my Laurel Denise Calendar
Bonus: My favorite planner tools and accessories
As an extra little bonus, I’ve included a list of my favorite tech and analog planning tools to inspire you!
Let me know what you think!
I hope this helps you get inspired for the new year and for chasing your goals and dreams.
Let me know how it goes – I’d love to connect, hear if this helps you as much it has helped me!
Follow me on socials, comment on the social media post letting me know which one you loved, and even pop into my DMs to reach out – you can find me @appmanda on all platforms!