Narrow down your options.

Once you know the function of your planner, ask yourself some additional questions to narrow down your choices. For example, does your planner need to be portable? “There are some bigger planners that we really like,” Ms Reeve said. “They’re folio-type planners that sit on your desk, but they give you a lot more room for writing.” If you have a small desk or you move around when you work, that might not be ideal. So decide how much space you want for your writing. Will you need to take your planner with you everywhere you go, or can it live on your desk?

Consider the material, too. “One of the best things you can do is go out to a store and touch the planner, feel it and really look at it,” Ms. Reeve said. Rather than ordering online, shopping for your planner in-person will give you a better idea of the paper quality. Plus, you can also see if it will fit in your purse, laptop bag or backpack.

Transition strategically

Finally, come up with a plan for your planner. If you’re like me, your entire life is digital, and you track your schedule with an online calendar and to-do list app. Before you ditch them completely, keep tabs on the events you track with these apps — birthdays, deadlines, random notes — then add them to your paper planner accordingly.

This sounds obvious, but if you have recurring tasks that your to-do list app adds automatically, the process can get confusing. Make a list of those recurring tasks, and don’t forget to put them on your planner each week, month or quarter. It might even help to write down those tasks on a separate page in your planner. For example, if you have a meeting at 2 p.m. every other Wednesday, write that down on a “Recurring Reminders” page that you check each time you plan out your day, week or month.

Rather than jump ship completely, you might also gradually introduce paper planning back into your life. For example, I use Google Calendar to keep track of important dates. Rather than write down these many, many dates in my new paper planner, I decided to keep my monthly digital calendar and simply use my paper planner as a weekly scheduler. Every Friday, I plan my upcoming week, look at my digital monthly calendar, and write down any important due dates. As I get into the habit of writing everything down, perhaps I’ll add my monthly schedule to the mix.

All this said, I did find one downside to using a paper planner. As portable as it may be, it will never match the accessibility of your phone, which can make scheduling difficult. For example, one night as I hopped into bed, my phone buzzed. “Can you have this assignment done by next Wednesday?” a client asked. I wanted to check my schedule and email her back, but I remembered I wasn’t using my digital app anymore, and I didn’t have my paper planner in bed with me. “I guess this will have to wait until tomorrow,” I thought. I put down my phone and went to bed.

Come to think of it, though, maybe that’s not a bad thing.