Totally Tech?

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Today is the first day of a new semester, bringing me face-to-face with my planning and organizing preferences. So much of what I need is online -- class lists, attendance, e-mail -- which made things all that much more frustrating when I couldn't log into my account this morning. 

Luckily, I'm still, at heart, a paper and pencil girl, and I already had paper copies of what I needed. That and the Gmail app on my phone.

And so, I find myself with one foot in each camp. I'm at home with most technology, but paper and pencil remains my security blanket; I'm such an I need to see it girl that I can't survive without schedules and lists staring me in the face. Okay, maybe survive is too strong a word, but I definitely need a visual reminder.

Sometimes, I end up doing double duty. When it comes to taking attendance, for example, I check names off on my paper roster and later record the attendance electronically. I tried not doing it that way last semester, and found it very inconvenient not to have a hard copy, so back to Plan A. When it comes to calendars, I transfer my weekly appointments from my planner (where they've been written in pencil) to a single page that lets me see the week at a glance and add in lists and anything else that pops up. The older I get, the more I see multiple copies as an advantage; writing things down, even more than once, makes it more likely that I'll remember them

I'm not suggesting that everybody needs to be a paper-and-pencil person. The point of Organizing by STYLE is to choose what works for you and base your systems on your preferences. Plenty of people successfully use the calendars on their phones but, given my I need to see it personal style, that just doesn't work for me. I prefer to just write everything down with a nice, sharp pencil that has a good eraser.

How about you? Are you a tech person, a paper-and-pencil person or a hybrid?