It's been nearly two full months since I've started Experiment Log – 006. I'll admit that I almost forgot about it. So, today I'll officially end the experiment. Here's what I've learned after trying out different digital tools for weekly planning.

Weekly Planning using Email

This was the most surprising out of all that I've tried. I honestly enjoyed creating my weekly plans using email. Basically, I would write down the plan for Monday to Sunday, then email it to myself. I cannot explain it, but I get a kick out of doing that, sending myself my weekly plan. One other thing I liked about weekly planning using email, is that if I need to make a change, I need to send myself a new email by replying to my original email. It sorts of acts like a basic versioning system wherein you can actually see what the previous tasks were, versus what the new ones are going to be.

What I don't like about it is that I have to make sure I type in the right email address before hitting send. In other words, there is a chance that I will accidentally send someone else my weekly plan. And depending on the contents of my weekly plan, that could be a big privacy/security issue. There's also the fact that my weekly plan lives on an email server in the cloud, which means my email service provider can probably read what I have planned for the weekend. And if for some reason I lose all internet connectivity, then I probably won't be able to check my weekly plan. So, not ideal, but it was a fun way to do weekly plans.

My previous experiment was about weekly planning using pen and paper, mainly using a Bullet Journal. This experiment is about weekly planning using digital tools.

Why not continue weekly planning with pen and paper?

One of my issues with using my Bullet Journal for weekly planning was that I felt like I was wasting paper with the Weekly Log pages. The reason I felt like it was a waste of paper was because a weekly plan is just that, a plan. It is not a record of what really happened during that week. For the true record of events that happened during a week, I can look at my Daily Log pages. The Daily Log pages I want to save. The Weekly Log pages? Not so much.

I started this experiment with the intention of better planning my leisure activities, through the process of weekly planning. Here is what I've discovered after a month of weekly planning.

This experiment is about weekly planning. My goal is to figure out whether doing so will improve my life in some way. It might look like I'm doing this for productivity gains, but I'm not. That is because my primary motivation for this experiment is to plan out leisure activities for when I have free time.

Do I play video games? If so, what game? Do I read a book? If so, what book? Do I watch a show on Netflix? If so, what show? Do I play board games? If so, what game? Do I play the guitar? Do I do some recreational programming? Do I write a journal entry? Basically, I want to take away those kinds of questions and just have a list that I can look at to determine what I should be doing next.