Digital Planning Questions

Parents Forum
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I apologize for the long winded questions. I am trying to figure out with my teen effective organizational strategies or productivity tools that teen can use in college BEFORE teen gets to college, so teen can practice them.

I am an analog planner. As an example of how old school I am, I use a Franklin Covey paper planner and the Franklin Planner system.

Teen has no interest in paper planning but doesn’t really have a digital planning system either. For reasons that are kind of too involved to explain here, teen could really use a simple, easy to stick to, digital planning system, but one that is visible to teen at all times.

For example, is there a digital tool like a dry erase wall calendar that one can sit on the desk that is always open to your calendar and that gives you reminders? What digital planning/productivity tools do college kids use? Again it would ideally be VERY simple and have a component that is always visible. No logging in to check the calendar.

Also, teen has two main Google accounts. One that is the school’s and one that is teen’s personal email account. Will notifications that are put into his personal email calendar pop up on his school calendar (DON’T want them to). Conversely is there a way to make his school calendar events pop up on his personal calendar. (DO want them too)

I ask because if there is a way to have a digital calendar always open on your desk, I don’t want teen to have to toggle between calendars to see schedule, but I also want teen to be able to plan personal life around school life. Thank you in advance.

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Apple and Android devices support multiple calendars in their native calendar app, so you should be able to add the school calendar alongside the existing personal calendar. The school’s IT support team should be able to provide instructions for setting this up. Ask them for a subscription URL (iCal link).

And as for organizing and planning, try the Trello app. It worked well for my daughter.

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Thank you for the suggestions. Any suggestions for a digital replacement for a giant wall calendar/dry erase board

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A smart board? But they are expensive!

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This is what our family does. Each family member has an individual calendar, plus we have a “family” calendar. We did this all through google calendars and have the google calendars integrated with our Apple devices. It has worked mostly seamlessly for many years. Google calendars offer a lot of options for device integration, privacy, etc. None of us are google devotees but they are great at the calendar thing.

On these calendars we put anything we might need to know about each other: mostly appointments, work shifts, travel, etc. This is just the basics for 4 family members (kids don’t put much on theirs). We don’t put school assignments or to-dos or anything like that on the shared calendars. You can see below that it gets pretty full with just the basics for 4 people.

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As far as more personal and detailed planning goes, preferences are highly individual, so we all do our own thing.

• I put most of my meetings/appointments on the shared digital calendar. It’s nice because I can just embed and click on the zoom / teams link, or an address for directions. And my family can see when I’m busy. I supplement with a paper planner for my to-do lists: weekly calendar on left page, to-do list(s) on right page. I’ve tried to do that digitally and it just doesn’t work for me.

• Spouse uses their shared digital calendar similar to me (meetings / appts). For other planning, I have no idea. I know there are to do lists scrawled on random pieces of paper sometimes.

• Our eldest doesn’t put his meetings or work shifts on our shared calendar anymore because he’s away at college and we don’t need to know anymore. Anything while he’s home he will put on there. When he was young, he used a paper planner. Sometime in middle school, his school started using google suites. So he used a running weekly to do document that he’d made in his google drive, formatted the way he liked it, and just always had that document up with the rest of his school stuff. Now that he’s in college, his school uses outlook, which he hates. So he moved to using todoist for his digital planning. He likes lists, but only digital.

• Our youngest child will never use anything, no matter what we try (he has ADD). The best we’ve managed is getting him to use our shared calendars on his phone to manage his work schedule. That took several months to get him doing it consistently. I do think he looks at his school stuff on Canvas, but he’s 16 and we’ve basically given up on trying to get him to keep any calendar / to-do list besides having his work shifts on our shared digital calendars.

So we have a hybrid system. Shared digital (mostly google) calendars all integrated across all devices for all family members. This is where the need-to-know stuff goes. Then each person does their own thing for more personal planning. It’s worked very well for a busy family with widely varying individual planning preferences.

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FWIW, both of my kids have stuck with simple paper planners after finding it tedious to use their phone calendars. It’s a lot easier to just cross out something with a pen or erase with a pencil. My D uses a “posher” version, something like this, and replaces the calendar each year: Foundations 6-Ring Leather Agenda | A5 | Cloth & Paper – CLOTH & PAPER

I know you want something digital, but is it possible your child will enjoy a quality planner that is meant to be used for years to come?

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I get that this discussion is about digital planners. DH uses one and wishes I would join, but my always-open/in-plain-view paper day planner is also my journal/diary. Every day, in addition to appts/events, I jot a small note about the day. I also keep cards/tickets/photos/mementos between its pages. DH adds anything from his calendar that I need to know about or affects us both. He doesn’t care for this dual entry, but he understands that my day planner reflects our lives and isn’t going away.

DS grew up understanding that if it wasn’t in my planner, it wasn’t happening so he, too, always knew to make sure his obligations were recorded there. When he got to boarding school, he used a calendar-gridded white board on the wall next to his desk to keep track of his classes/assignments/sports schedule, but eventually transitioned to his school’s
and Apple’s digital calendars.

So, no suggestion for any particular app, but a thumbs up to @Lindagaf’s reasoning for a paper planner – at any age.

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my now 2nd year college student uses a simple spreadsheet. (for context she finally diagnosed with ADD during her first year of college even though I long suspected the diagnosis. So EF skills are definitely a work in progress for her.) The template was provided to her from her schools student success office.

All her courses are on one spreadsheet and color coding is done by item type (paper, reading, exam, etc). She keeps is sorted by due date.

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FWIW my D (now age 24) also uses an old fashioned pen/paper planner and has since high school.

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My college son uses his outlook calendar associated with his school email. For “to do” items he does one of two things: Either has a running list at the start of every day of things to accomplish that day, or he sets aside a specific time block for an assignment/activity. So for example, Tuesday might be: 8:00 wakup and eat; 9:00 class 1; 10:00 class 2; 11:00 gym; 12:00 HW time - project for class 3: 1:00 lunch with friend; 2:00 HW do problem sets; 3:00 meet project team to discuss; 4:00 class 3; 5:00 club sport practice; 6:30 dinner; 8:00 meeting; 9:30 homework. It’s a little much, but it really helps him feel like he’s got control. And if he hasn’t finished something when it’s time arrives, he works until he’s gotten to a place where he can stop (so like not in the middle of a sentence or whatever) then stops, and comes back to it later.

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If I understand you correctly, the Skylight digital calendar is the kind of device you are asking about but it’s pricy, around $300. I don’t know if there are cheaper versions.

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I asked him and he definitely won’t do paper. I’ve bought him paper academic planners in the past and he never used them. I prefer paper myself. The planner in the picture is lovely.

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I did see that. I think that is what I am envisioning but I agree it is a bit costly.

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I think that’s pretty cool. I"m never giving up my paper planner. It gets the job done.

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My kid used a paper calendar planner book all the way through professional school. She now uses a white board placed in a prominent place so it’s just about impossible to NOT see it every day.

She does put things like appointments on the calendar on her phone, and does get reminders…but they are also on that white board, and were in the calendar book when she used that.

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I’m not at all surprised. Barring a few exceptions, kids who grew up in the digital age tend to strongly prefer digital tools.

I think the “multiple calendars on iPhone/iPad” is a good start, before you invest in something expensive. It just might do the trick for your kid!

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Your son sounds like he really has his act together. Where does he keep his to do list? Is it visible somewhere or does he have to log in ever so often to check his calendar, etc.

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This is what my college freshman does too. It’s in Google Sheets and she has the assignment, due date, and how many days she wants to be reminded about it. Twice a day, she gets an email with what is not done but within the reminder time. The email was the key for her. She says even if she doesn’t open it, just getting it is a reminder to get to work.

She also has a white board that she puts bigger or one-off things, like her pep band schedule, doctor appointments, etc.

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He makes an early “appointment” on his calendar every day and pastes the to-do list in there. So like today (Tuesday) he might have an appointment at 6:00 AM - he’s definitely not doing anything then, but he pastes the to do stuff in there. Then as the day goes on, he opens the appointment back up and deletes things that he finishes or adds things that need to be accomplished. Then before he goes to bed he changes the date on the appointment to be the next day, so Wednesday in this example, shifting the appointment and to-do list to the next day.

When he’s at school and working at his desk, he has three monitors. One is old and junky (it’s from our very first flat screen computer monitor, it’s probably 20+ years old and small). That little old monitor isn’t great for much, too few pixels, but it’s fine for managing things like keeping the calendar open constantly, which is what he does.

If he’s not at his desk I’m guessing he just checks it on his phone every so often. The calendar gives him pings when it’s 15 minutes out to start a new thing, so during the day it gives him reminders. The To Do list, though, I think he just as to keep re-opening that appointment.

(And thank you for the compliment! He has pretty severe dyslexia and ADHD - he works very slowly - so over the years we’ve had to come up with a lot of ways to maximize his time to make sure he can get everything done.)

editing to add to this - in the morning, the first thing he does is open his to-do list appointment. Usually while he’s eating breakfast or slowly getting going. When he looks at it, that’s when he decides how to block his day in terms of assignment/homework time. So like when he wakes up for Wednesday, it might only have the class periods, practice, lunch with a friend, and evening club meeting blocked. Then he’ll fill in the rest of the day as he sees that there’s a big assignment coming up he’ll give it a dedicated hour or two for homework, then if he sees a long term project coming he might give it a dedicated spot to contact group members etc. It’s also the only way he could make sure he got time to work out - which is really important to his mental health as well as physical. This week (his last week of winter break) he’s doing a modified version with time blocked to apply to summer jobs, workout, and email professors to ask for recommendations.

He’s become a little retentive about the calendar, but it seems to work for him.

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I say…if he has a system that works, that is what he should use. If I put things in my phone calendar, I get reminders to do them. You might suggest that.

When I worked helping HS kids with their organization, the thing I learned was that they needed to choose the method and try it. There were some systems that I thought were cumbersome and not efficient, but they worked well for the students.

@OctoberKate Your son sounds like he has an amazing system that works for him.

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