You all know I am a big fan of planning and organizing my day. So I can actually get things done. This is coming from somebody who is a little bit scatterbrained. And so I’m a big fan in you know time blocking and putting things on the calendar. So that you actually get them done. But also I am a digital person who also really loves stationery and all things paper.
A few years ago I ran into digital planning and I fell in love with it off the bat. It has been an integral part of my planning processes and my business for a couple of years now. So today I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about digital planning. And how to get started and where to start. If it’s right for you all the things, let’s go.
Intro to Digital Planning for Beginners
We like old people and new people. I’m saying if you were searching the internet for digital planning for beginners, wanting to know more about it, wanting to know how you get started, wanting to know all the things, then you have landed on the right article. And I’m glad you’re here.
Few years ago I had gotten an iPad and just randomly stumbled on this thing called digital planning. I’ve been using them ever since not only do I use digital planning on my iPad but I also take notes on my iPad. And it’s one of my favorite things that I have in my arsenal that is for sure. But I realized that even though I found it a few years ago I haven’t done an updated article on what is digital planning for beginners, how to get started all of that for over a year. We’re in a new year which means new people are going to find this awesomeness. I’m here to tell you all about it. How you can use it in your life and in your business in just your everyday today world whatever.
So we’re going to go over this in four main parts.
- What is digital planning how can you use it. An overview of the thing.
- What kind of device can you use it on how does it work with your devices
- What kind of app do you need
- How do you actually get the planner and how do you actually get it on your iPad
Digital Planning for Beginners: What is digital planning?
Essentially it’s a combination of paper planner and a digital planner like a calendar. A digital calendar google calendar whatever got together and had a baby that’s basically what digital planning. It is basically a paper planner literally living in an iPad. So you can flip through the months. You can plan your week out on a weekly view, you can write on it just like you can on a paper planner.
For those of you heavily involved in the planner world, you can also use stickers which are like so much fun. It literally has all the functionality of a paper planner in an iPad. Like no joke it is everything you could possibly need. The really cool part is pages can be used over and over again you can insert things you can like.
Adding anything you want
If you found anything like worksheet or pdf or whatever on the internet, that you want to put in your planner you can totally do that. You can take pages out, you can use a planner over and over again if it is undated or just buy a new one for the new year if it’s dated.
You can do basically everything you can do with a paper planner. If the phrase digital planning for beginners confuses you hopefully that cleared some things up. I think it’s honestly more versatile than a paper planner. You can insert photos, you can highlight, you can erase highlights, you can erase things.
I don’t know you can obviously tell that I really enjoy this now.
Digital planning with Google Calendar
It’s a question that I get asked pretty often is can this planner can a digital planner sync up with your google calendar and the answer to that is no. Essentially a digital planner is just an interactive pdf on an app in your tablet whether you’re using an android tablet or an iPad. It’s just an interactive pdf within an app in your iPad and so if there’s not really a good way for any kind of technology gods to be like.
He wrote that thing on Friday February 9th it should go on Friday February 9th on a google calendar but that. I don’t let that stop me from using my planner. I use my digital planner in paralle with my google calendar. So in my google calendar I’ll put things that are specific to times. When I have a certain appointment at a certain time or have to do something at a certain time. But with my digital planner I use it to more freeform plan and write out my goals and everything you would do in a paper planner. So it’s really freaking cool is it not.
Digital Planning for Beginners: What Kind of Device You Need
The next thing we’re going to talk about is your device. Digital planning for beginners can be done on any tablet. Literally anyone you can even use digital planners in digital planning on your phone. It doesn’t have to be a tablet. However I would highly recommend that you have some kind of tablet that has a writing style stylus. So for instance I have the apple iPad and the apple pencil. The pencil has like the fine tip and so I feel like I can write on it.
Better than I could if it were like one of those weird styluses with the like rounded tip or whatever. Basically any type of tablet with some type of pencil pen stylus with fine tip will do the work. Now I will say that most of the people who use digital planning who use digital planners. And most of the people you’re going to see talking about that are going to be using iPads and the apple pencil. They’re just really seamless and really easy to use. But obviously they’re a bit more costly than their counterparts in the android world.
Do you need an iPad Pro?
But you don’t need the most expensive iPad to get started. Do you have your entry level iPad which supports Apple Pencil? this is actually one of the more cost effective ipads it’s smaller as you can see. You can see the difference, there in the sizes but you can plan just the same on this. I actually did for a very long time. But again you can use basically any tablet that you want to use that has the capabilities built in to use a stylus and to use apps that allow you to write on interactive pdfs.
So the device is totally up to you it’s totally whatever is in your price range what it whatever you already have.
Now like I said you can actually use these on your phone as well. You can write on your planner you can you can plan just the same with you finger as you can with a stylus or an apple pencil. The problem with that is, it gets sloppier and it’s not as easy to read and it’s not as fun. It doesn’t feel as much like you’re writing on paper. Actually speaking of writing on paper both of these iPad so the one that my iPad pro both have screen protectors on them. That are meant to feel a bit more like paper. They’re a little bit more grippy. They’re not as like shiny and flat as most screen protectors and or as the screen itself.
Your handwriting when digital planning will smooth out
And so when I write I feel like my handwriting is 100 times better with one of these. I feel like I fell in love with digital planning for beginners all over again when I found those screen protectors. They just make it feel as if you’re writing on paper a bit more than if you were writing on that glass screen. Your handwriting gets a little better along the way.
Digital Planning for Beginner: The App you Need
Next things is about with digital planning app. Digital planning itself is kind of a combination of multiple things it’s the combination of the planner the app and the device. So that’s why I want to talk about all of those things so. You’ve got your device now we’ve got to figure out the app. What app are you going to use. There’s a ton of them out there in the market. You can use Goodnotes which is the program that I am currently using.
I have all of my planners in here. I have all of my digital notebooks anything that I want to write on with my apple pencil goes in Goodnotes. And so if you’re on an apple device I would highly recommend that as your app of choice. Now if you’re using an android tablet there’s a ton of apps that you can use as well. So the one that has been highly recommended to me from android users who say that it is very very similar to Goodnotes is an app called OneNote.
Why OneNote?
It is actually a very very good note-taking app as well. It would probably be my second choice if I wasn’t using Goodnotes. If I had to if you were like you can no longer use Goodnotes you have to use something else then I would definitely use OneNote. It’s available on both apple and android. So it’d be really easy to switch back and forth between your devices like if you have an iPhone. But you use an apple tablet and you want to be able to see your digital planner on both OneNote would probably be the app.
I would suggest for that but honestly the app is almost completely dependent on the type of device you have. And want to use so again if you’re using apple I’d totally go with Goodnotes. If you’re using android you can choose from something like OneNote or even Zodo. And you’ll be good to go basically the only capability you need is to be able to write with a stylus or pencil within the app. And to be able to pull in and use interactive pdfs. Because digital planners are built as interactive pdfs.
Click through tabs
So the click ability being able to click through tabs, being able to click in like on other pieces of the planner, being able to move and click and drag things is all a capability of an interactive pdf. And so when you download a digital planner it will come to you in a pdf form or in a format that is specific to the app you’re going to use.
It in but essentially when you’re choosing an app really all you need to make sure is that it allows for interactive pdfs.
Last but not least you’ve got to choose a planner so like I said digital planning is a combination of your device a planner and an app to use it in that’s it and so now.
Where I Can Get Planners
You’ve decided on your device on the app you need an actual planner where do you get those. They actually used to be way harder to find than the are now. There’s tons and tons of planners on the market including the ones in my store. There’s so many designs and so many aesthetics. So many different planners for different needs out there on the market. I would either find your favorite creator of digital planners so you know if you’re like. You can explore my website and free download.
I will say not all digital planners as far as the design are the same. Some of them have clickable tabs some of them have clickable dates. Clickable you know internal pieces, stickers and kind of just depends on the planner. And the designer all of my planners also have the capability to customize some of the tabs. So if you insert worksheets into your planner then you know you get a customizable tab.
There are ton of freebies to try out.
Now you can actually get dated and undated digital planners. In theory you could absolutely use the same digital planner forever and ever. You could buy it one time and then you could use it for the rest of your life if you want to write dates in every single month. If you’re like me I don’t like to do that. I used to buy planners where I would have to write the date in and I just did not enjoy doing that.
It made me not want to use the planner so if you’re like me and don’t want to do that, there are dated format as well. Most of my planners come in both the dated and the undated formats. So you can buy whichever one you think that you’ll use the most.
Pages and Stickers with Digital Planning
Now with basically any planner that you purchase you’ll be able to add in your own pages, take pages out and add in stickers. If you buy them somewhere else and that kind of thing so it really just comes down to functionality as well as the design. And what you want your planner to look like so if you find one that you love grab it and then if you don’t like it guess what they’re pretty cheap and you can get another one.
I told you it was super easy. It is not hard digital planning for beginners. If you want to get started just means that you have to have a tablet of some sort something to write with which could totally be your finger. It means that you need an app to run it on. And you need an actual digital planner that’s it. If you want to know more about Goodnotes how to work Goodnotes if you want to know more about digital planners all of that good stuff anything we’ve talked about today, You can check this article that I have done in the past and just know when you ready to download, you can check our freebies section.
If you have any other questions about digital planning let me know in the comments below. I’m happy to bring you a article about that.