Use The Medium Method To Combine Digital Note-Taking With Pen And Paper

As much as we enjoy digital tools, there’s something to be said for the simplicity of good, old-fashioned pen and paper. Instead of picking one or the other for your note-taking and day-to-day tasks, get the best of both worlds with The Medium Method.

Photo by www.Pixel.la Free Stock Photos

There are so many digital tools out there to help organise your notes and tasks, and those tools are great. They send you reminders. They help you automate your to-do list. They let you access your notes across multiple devices. However, writing things down on paper can help you focus and plot out ideas. It also helps you learn more effectively. To utilise the best of both worlds, writer Chad Hall suggests his technique, The Medium Method. Here’s what you need to get started and the gist of how it works:

• The main notebook: Each day, you capture everything here: quick ideas, tasks, sketches. Basically, it’s filled with scraps throughout the day. It’s the backbone of the entire method. The main notebook also includes a daily post-it note for last minute tasks that come up.
• A “travelling” notebook: A small pocket notebook you carry with you when you’re out and about. Jot down quick notes, then transfer those notes to your main notebook later.
• A digital task list/calendar: Obviously, this is where you keep your to-dos, events and other items in your schedule. At the end of the day, go through your main notebook and add any tasks or events.
• Long-term digital storage: Use Evernote or OneNote to digitise the most important items from your main notebook.

If you’re anything like me, you already use both paper and digital to jot down notes and tasks throughout the day. It’s really easy to get disorganised that way, which is why Hall’s method is so smart. You can tweak it a bit here and there to match your own preferences, but overall, it’s effective for integrating both mediums in a structured, organised way.

This is just a quick breakdown. Hall includes much more detail about the method in the link below.

Want to be more productive? Don’t go paperless. [todoist Blog]