Do you ever look at a draft of a digital document and see nothing but the words on the page — with no traces of the mental and emotional work that went into those words? This clean copy works well for the readers, not but necessarily for the writers. Sure, you can backtrack through previous versions, but those pre-drafts are just another, an earlier snapshot of cold, unrevealing text.

Some people dislike trying to shoehorn entire days’ worth of information into the little boxes provided by paper calendar books. The tiny little entries they can add don’t tell them enough about their tasks, goals, and methodologies to actually serve many purposes except as basic (and incomplete) reminders.

A paper planner/notebook serves up a blank slate for your own personal notation system. You can experiment with a variety of bulleting techniques, checkbox formats, columns, lined-off sections, color-coding, and other organizational preferences until you’ve got something that lets you work, think, and dream as effortlessly as possible. Don’t worry about whether it makes sense to anybody else — this is your planner and your productivity.