Digital Planners for iPad | 5 Surprising Reasons Digital Planners are Replacing Paper Planners.

Digital Planners for iPad

Have you heard all the fuss about digital planners for iPad and wondered what all the hype is about? Or, have you been using paper product organizers since you started keeping a schedule and see no reason for another excuse to stare at the screen?

I hear you. As a life-long paper planner and someone who just enjoys beautiful stationery, I also wondered if going digital was truly beneficial, or just another electronic indulgence. Until I finally got curious enough to research it.

I’ll admit, I already knew going in that a digital planning system was going to prove itself as a superior organizational tool over multiple hard-copy agendas, journals, and post-it notes. I was amazed, though, at the benefits I hadn’t considered.

Top 5 Game-Changing Reasons Digital Planners for iPad are Replacing  Paper Planners:

1. Digital planners, notebooks, and journals are password protected. Never again worry that your sensitive information is going to fall into the wrong hands. Feel free to write down those passwords, or let your uncensored thoughts flow all through your pages…no one will see them unless you specifically share them.
2. Nothing is permanent. Afraid to write in, set up, or decorate your planner, for fear of messing it up? Tired of trying to dismiss how sloppy a planner starts to look after one too many changed plans or mistakes? Yes, life is messy, but that doesn’t mean you have to overlook it in your planner every day.
3.  Digital notes are faster to get to. With hyperlinks embedded throughout, and the ability to insert your own external webpages and jot all over those too, finding your spot or retrieving your references is literally faster than flipping through paper pages.  
4. No need to limit yourself. Need more than one calendar, colored pen, or highlighter, but hold back because it’s too much to carry? End up leaving planners at home or the office, then don’t have them handy when something needs to be referenced or scheduled? Have all of what you need, at your fingertips, where ever you go.
5. Never lose your lists, reminders, or random notes again. Everything has a spot in a digital planner, and if there isn’t a spot for it, you can add it in with a click. 

This post is all about digital planners for iPad.

What is a Digital Planner?

A digital planner is an electronic version of your favorite classic planner but in PDF format. Since the fun, not to mention, the utility of planners involves actually writing in or annotating them, converting to a digital notetaking system will require the use of a PDF markup application that has been downloaded to your tablet or device.

What is a PDF?

Portable Document Format, or PDF, is a foolproof and supercharged way to exchange and present high-quality electronic documents. And since it’s an industry standard, these interactive files can be shared with anyone regardless of the operating system, software, or hardware being used to view them. iOS or Android? It doesn’t matter. Windows or Mac? Still no issue.

Daily Planners

Some sort of book-bound paper calendar, planner, and most recently, the bullet journal has been in my everyday bag, purse, or backpack since I started college at nineteen. I am not alone out there. According to this great article in WIRED, planning has turned into a multimillion-dollar industry. Hundreds of millions.

$342.7 million in 2016, to be exact (see above referenced great article). And women are leading this pack. All over the world, and dating back to 1773, planner systems have been used to coordinate activities and manage responsibilities for both work and home. As such, their functionality lies in the richness of the details contained within them.  

Digital Planners for iPad are Password Protected

1. Digital Planners, Notebooks, and Journals are Password Protected

People record a multitude of things in their personal and professional lives, ranging from the bare minimum of what needs to be remembered to chronicling every microscopic detail. No matter the particulars, no one can afford for their classified information to get out:

• Account cheat sheets: user names, passwords, account numbers
• Financial data, budget tracking
• Top secret family information: birthdays, socials, details of whereabouts; an identity theft’s gold mine.
• Meeting notes: privileged business details, project development, systems planning, employee or other staff notations
• Teacher planners: student names, grades, behavior notes, and records of parent conversations
• Business planners: confidential client information, content planning, exclusive product specifications, affiliate partner requirements, dashboards, pricing and payment stats, mileage documentation, business expenses for reimbursement or tax planning
• Health care information: policy numbers, medical diagnoses, treatments, medications, their side effects, allergies, blood type, trending diagnostic results, health care directives; as a mother and daughter to aging parents, I keep track of this protected information for my whole family.

Whatever the case may be, your organizational and productivity tools contain critical documentation. Imagine the inconvenience their loss or theft could cause.

But, unlike paper planning systems, iPad planners are, at the very least, password protected. And if that isn’t enough, can be set up to have a multi-factor, biometrically secure entry process. This is a game-changer.

For the utmost security, I would recommend an alpha-numeric password and fingerprint combination wherever possible, versus an easily guessable personal identification number (PIN).

And set up facial recognition. You don’t have to have a twin or doppelganger out there; even slight facial similarities have been known to bypass facial recognition features on electronic devices.

Aesthetic Digital Planners

2. Nothing is Permanent

The beauty of digital planning is the ability to keep your planner looking pristine at all times. Made a mistake? Tap the eraser option in your notetaking app and fix it. No more scratches, white-out, washi tape, or stickers haphazardly throughout your calendar, making it look like a child’s notebook.

Too much white space around your handwriting, or worse, text too big and overlapping into the wrong sections in your calendar? No need to meditate over it. Click, click to resize it, and just like that, it fits perfectly into your allotted spaces. 

Do you love artistic spreads but don’t consider yourself an artist? Download your deco. Or, are you disappointed in how a chosen theme turned out after inserting an entire palette of color-coordinated planner accessories? Edit and recreate.

If this sounds overboard to you, or you refuse to give in to this kind of useless perfection, then leave your mistakes alone. Just know that you can always change your mind because nothing is final in a digital notebook unless that is how you chose to leave it.

iPad Planner

3. Digital Notes are Faster to Get To

When I switched from the traditional monthly & weekly agendas to the Bullet Journal analog system of notetaking, I started indexing where to find all the information scattered throughout my custom journals. In fact, the Bullet Journal and many of its knock-offs come pre-printed with an index and numbered pages for this very purpose. 

(Photo of previously used indexing systems)

Hyperlinked Digital Planner

Besides looking a lot cleaner, another surprising benefit to using an iPad planner is that digital notebooks come equipped with hyperlinked tabs that help you navigate to the different sections, or spreads, in the planner.

(Photo of hyperlinks in Open Spaces Digital Planner, shown in Pastels – See It Here)

And if being able to instantly “click” to each section of the planner isn’t convenient enough, the GoodNotes 5 app for iPad users has a search feature built right in. Even this is clickable!

(Search feature in GoodNotes, used in the Open Spaces Digital Planner – See It Here)

GoodNotes Digital Planner

4. No Need to Limit Yourself

Another hidden perk to digital planning over traditional paper planning is the limitless options for customization. Calendars, monthly, weekly, and daily spreads, trackers, templates, and even notepads with your favorite paper can be effortlessly added to your digital planner.

(See the Open Spaces in Emerald Green, shown with Cornell notes page)

Not to mention, endless options for digital planning accessories such as themed stickers, sticky notes, and washi tape.

Washi tape! I had so many rolls of washi tape, I needed to purchase special storage containers to fit them all. Then there were the countless colored pens, pencils, markers, highlighters, paint pens, and brush calligraphy pens that also eventually required their own storage solutions.

Stop the crazy. And stop adding to the landfills. Donate your bounty to a children’s hospital and get into the minimalistic now.

GoodNotes, the notetaking app that is the hands-down favorite for iOS users, has all your editing tools built into the app. No more deciding which color palette of pens gets space in your bag, and which accessories have to stay at home. Everything you think you need, and things you never thought of, are available as part of the functionality of the app.

I am in love with the prospects.

Personalized Planner

5. Never Lose Your Lists, Reminders, or Random Notes Again

Suddenly, streamlining productivity, fostering creativity, and organizing daily activities make a lot more sense. Everything has its place in a digital planning system because you add what you need and delete what you don’t.

This post was all about the reasons digital planners for iPad are replacing traditional paper planners.