Franklin Daily Planner vs. PDA? Was the title of a post on the discussion board this morning in my class Organize Or Agonize. Emotions run high whenever this topic is broached. Personally, I favor the paper-based daily planner. There is a litany of reasons, but here are the most significant that I have found.

PDAs are unreliable, batteries run dead at the worst possible moment, wireless connections go down at the worst possible moment, software fails to boot at the worst possible moment. The more important the task, the higher the likelihood the technology will fail. Always at the most important moment in a person’s career. It’s in that high-level meeting were your ability to function is on display for all top-level executives.

Issue number two PDAs are slow. Envision sitting in a meeting with a customer where you need to record items that he wants to include in your next proposal to him. You going to type a couple of paragraphs with that pencil eraser on those tiny keyboards one key at a time?. . . I don’t think so. What, you’re going to ask the client for a piece of paper so you can take some notes. You’re really going to look silly. In the meantime your competitor has her daily planner open to the customer page and is jotting down notes as the client specifies them. Who do you think is going to walk out with the money?

The only downside to a paper-based system, that I have ever heard is that it is a little bit larger than a PDA and is tiresome to carry around. GET OVER IT! . . . Is that a reason to be stressed out and disorganized? I’ll trade a little inconvenience for efficiency all day long. If you want to really test this find a PDA power user and a paper based power and set up a series of tasks to be completed that are normal routine everyday personal organization tasks, dig out the stopwatch. Hand the list of tasks to do both the PDA aficionado and the daily planner aficionado and see who wins, my guess is you will be startled by the results. Most likely the PDA aficionado can not even complete all of the tasks on the list.

I know some of you will disagree at love to hear from those of you whom believe that a electronic organizer is more useful than a paper-based system leave your comments.

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