By Kieran, Slate & Serif
If you do most of your planning at a computer, I'd recommend our browser planner, Slate & Serif. You type into its daily, weekly and monthly pages in the browser on a Windows PC or Mac, beside the email and documents you're already working in. There's no PDF to import, no note app to choose and no tablet or stylus required.
A lot of digital-planner advice starts with buying a tablet and importing a file. That's an elaborate answer to a simple question: where do next week's commitments go while I'm at my desk?
Three kinds of information, three places
Desk work produces three different kinds of information, and they get muddled when everything goes into one calendar.
- Something with a time: the supplier call on Tuesday at 2.
- Something to do: draft the summary of the monthly report, chase the missing invoice.
- Something to keep: your notes from the call, and the figures the report needs.
In Slate & Serif, the first is an event, the second is a to-do and the third belongs on a notebook or project page. Events appear on Daily, Weekly and the Monthly Calendar. To-dos appear on Daily, Weekly and the Monthly Plan task list. Notes stay where you put them, so a call title doesn't have to carry three paragraphs of context.
That separation is most of what makes a planner useful beside real work. A calendar crammed with long event titles is hard to read. Giving selected to-dos a date lets you see the actions you've chosen for that day.
A five-minute start at the keyboard
Here's a fictional Monday morning that uses only what's on the page.
- Choose Today to open today's Daily page. Write the main focus: "Get the monthly report to a first draft."
- Pick the top three: draft the summary, chase the missing invoice, and write questions for Tuesday's call.
- Make the first two into to-dos so you can tick them off. Write the questions straight into the report's project page, where you'll want them during the call.
- Glance at the schedule. If an email has just moved a meeting, edit the event once, and Daily, Weekly and the Monthly Calendar all follow.
- When something lands mid-task, use Quick add to create the event or to-do without leaving the page you're on.
On Tuesday afternoon, after the call, open the report's project page and type the notes while they're fresh. If the supplier needs revised figures by Wednesday, that's a new to-do on Wednesday, not another line in the call's title. On Thursday, when you can't remember what they said about pricing, Search finds the note.
Writing spaces such as the focus box save as you go. Events and to-dos have their own Save button.
Look at the week before you say yes
A weekly focus and priorities beside Wednesday's next steps. Fictional entries from our Help guide.
The Weekly Overview puts the seven days together, with a weekly focus and each day's priorities, to-dos and schedule. It's the view to open before you accept another Thursday meeting. A day can look free in your inbox and turn out to hold the report deadline, two calls and the errand you promised to run.
A work screen can still look like yours
There's no reason a planner open beside a spreadsheet has to look like another spreadsheet. On Premium you can change the theme, cover, binding, paper and background, set the font, size and color of what you type, and add your own photos and stickers. Core keeps the default Slate & Serif look.
If your week has costs, such as a client lunch or a train fare, Monthly Finance keeps budget and actual figures, and the Expense Tracker feeds the actuals. You type the amounts and it does the sums.
Before you move your work week
Will it sync with my work calendar? Not yet. Google and Microsoft calendar connections and private browser-notification previews aren't available. Reminder choices exist on entries, but if your work calendar has to sync, that matters today.
Can I bring my old planner? It doesn't import planner PDFs or handwriting. Start with the next few weeks and keep old files as an archive.
Can I try it first? Yes. The Premium sample runs on a laptop or desktop with no account or card. Use made-up details: a call, two to-dos and a note. Then check whether you can find each one where you'd expect. Sample edits stay in that browser until the displayed 24-hour reset, so it's a test drive rather than a place for real work.
If you want a planner on the computer you already use, typed and ready to go, that's what Slate & Serif is for.
Open the free desktop Premium sample
Add Slate & Serif as a preferred source on Google. It's a personal setting that only affects what Google shows you.