Going Paperless

My love for planners knows no ends, I obsess over them. The Day Designer is still my favorite planner ever. During school, I used that planner all the time. I loved that each day was separate, giving me enough space to write down all the homework I needed to do, all the blogging and book tasks I need too. I color coded with pens and decorated with washi tape.
Going Paperless
People used to admire my planners. But here’s the thing, they can be expensive. The Day Designer, while I love it, is $60. While I totally think it’s accurately priced, $60 is a lot for a college student who’s only getting paid every other week.
Now that it’s summer, I’m not needing the planner. My day is pretty much the same everyday, and all my to-dos are pretty much the same as well. I quit using the planner. It wasn’t a thought out process, it just happened that way.
[Tweet “Planning to go paperless? Here’s three apps that could help get you started. #paperless”]
So, this summer, I’m going to try something new. Going paperless. Some of the tension that I mentioned yesterday is in my shoulders, so I’m trying to leave the house every day with less and less. Going paperless would simply require my phone and tablet. Wouldn’t that be nice? So far, I have three apps that I’m working on to get closer to paperless, and my paperless at the time, paperless is just planning paper free. I’m sure it’ll advance and grow later on. My three apps I’m using are:

1. Evernote

For a while, I was using OneDrive after Laney (a contributor here) convinced me to try it. I did and then I switched back to Evernote a few weeks ago, and I’m not really sure why I did, but I jumped in full force, purchased the “plus” package and now I’m constantly looking for awesome ways to use it. I’ll talk more about it in the next few weeks.
I use it for notes, ideas, articles to read, etc.

2. Todoist

I used this app back in November and then stopped. And then started again about the beginning of April. It’s a great to-do app, and I love being able to break it up into projects and subprojects, add due dates and notes too. There’s a thing called “Karma” that motivates you to keep working on your to-do list.

3. Sunrise Calendar

I’m weird in the way that I like to keep all my calendars separate. My iCloud account with my mac and my iPhone has my school and personal things, but I use Google Calendar for blogging (I actually use a paper planner for blogging too, more on that at some point).
Sunrise is cool in that I can bring all the calendars together in one place, it has android, iOS and a Mac app (covering all these is a must when I find an app), and it has cool features like following a TV show schedule or following a school’s football schedule, so I already have the Bearkat’s 2015 football schedule on my calendar. It also has cool integration with a ton of apps, including Evernote and Todoist, so it’s a win on all accounts.
I’ve been working with this system (with all these apps) for about a week now, and so far I like it. As I begin my internship, we’ll see if it continues to work, and if it’ll work with my school schedule in the fall. If you have any tips about going paperless, please share them, and ask any questions if you have any. I’m not really sure how this experiment will work or how I’m going to do it, but I love to hear from people, whether it’s advice or questions.