Stop switching apps. The best productivity tool is a notebook, a pen, and the willingness to slow down and think.

I recently sat down with Carl Pullein, a productivity consultant and YouTuber who has spent over a decade helping people get organized. Carl has been using Todoist for twelve years, Evernote for sixteen, and last year he ran a full-year experiment with a Franklin Planner. We talked about why people keep switching tools, why paper still matters, and why convenience might not be as good for us as we think.

What came out of the conversation surprised me. Not because the ideas were new, but because they made so much sense - and because science keeps confirming what a simple notebook already knew.

Here is what I learned.

Stop Switching Apps - You Are Not Doing Any Work

The first thing Carl told me was blunt. When you switch productivity apps, you are not doing any work. You are just moving stuff from one side of your desk to the other. It is the digital version of shuffling papers around and calling it progress.

Most people will never admit this, but the real reason they switch is because the new app looks prettier. Then they find a better excuse. "My current system feels overwhelming." But here is the thing - it looks overwhelming because of what you put in there. It is not the tool. It is always what you are putting in it.

Unless something is actually broken, switching apps is one of the biggest time-wasting activities you can do. Carl has been with Todoist for twelve years. He knows every keyboard shortcut, every workaround, every little trick. That knowledge compounds over time. You do not get that by jumping ship every six months.

The Dopamine Trap of a Fresh Start

Switching apps feels good. That is the dopamine talking. You get a momentary sense of relief because you eliminate a lot of the mess from your old system when you transfer to the new one. But give it two or three weeks and it is just as overwhelming as before. Then you see a YouTube video about yet another new app, and the whole cycle starts again.

Carl put it beautifully. You are focusing on the tools instead of focusing on the craft. A carpenter who makes chairs and works of art is not constantly shopping for new hammers. Those guys have tools that are a hundred years old, handed down from their grandparents. It is not the tools that make you productive. It is you. It is the clarity of knowing what is important to you and to the work you are doing. The tools are often a distraction, especially if you are changing them all the time.

To prove this point, Carl regularly runs experiments where he switches to tools he does not normally use - Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, even a paper planner for a whole year. And every time, his system stays the same. The work gets done. The tools change, the output does not.

A Carpenter's Hammer and the Franklin Planner

Carl's preferred stack is simple. Todoist for tasks. Evernote for notes. Apple Calendar for scheduling. That is it. No fancy project management software. No complex integrations. When I asked him about project management, he said he uses Evernote as his project manager. He even wrote his book over three years using Scrivener for the writing and Evernote for all the surrounding notes, meetings, and checklists.

But the most interesting part of Carl's system is not digital at all. It is the Franklin Planner he brought back into his life after first using one in 1992. What he loves about it is the layout - tasks on the left, calendar in the middle, notes on the right. When he writes out his appointments by hand, he can visually see how much time he realistically has to do actual work. If the page is full of meetings, he knows not to pile on tasks.

This is something digital tools are terrible at. You can schedule your day three times over and the app will still accept it. Paper has a built-in constraint. When the page is full, the day is full. That limitation is not a bug. It is a feature.

The Power of a Pocket Notebook

Carl carries a small pocket notebook everywhere. When he watches his favorite podcasts in the evening - Cal Newport, The Rest Is History - he keeps his little notebook next to him instead of a phone. Random thoughts, content ideas, project sparks - they all go in there. It is, by his own admission, a complete mess. But every Saturday during his weekly planning, he goes through the previous week's notes and pulls out anything worth moving into his digital system.

The pocket notebook serves another purpose too. Carl's wife is Korean and operates on Korean time, which means ten minutes late. Carl is from the UK, which means ten minutes early. So he often has a fifteen-to-twenty-minute window sitting in the car waiting. And instead of scrolling, he writes. He told me there is something about pen and paper that engages the brain better than any digital tool.

I started doing something similar years ago - copying the day's events and tasks onto a paper pocket notepad. If I ran out of space on the page, it meant I would not have the time to do the task. The page was the day. Simple, visual, and honest.

Why Handwriting Makes You Smarter

There is real science behind all of this. Carl mentioned the University of Tokyo study, and he was right - there is now a mountain of research showing that handwriting engages the brain differently than typing. When you form letters by hand, you are essentially drawing. You are engaging the creative part of your brain.

When you type, it is repetitive tapping. Plus, your word processor starts flagging grammar and spelling mistakes, so you shift from creating to editing. That is the opposite of what you want when you are planning a new project or brainstorming ideas.

Carl's approach to project planning is to grab a clean A4 sheet of paper, a couple of colored pens, and a highlighter. Day one is the big brain dump. Day two, he comes back with a different pen and starts connecting ideas. Day three, more refinement. Then he scans it into Evernote and starts building the digital version. But the initial creative thinking happens exclusively on paper. As he put it - if you want to be creative, pick up a pencil. Or a pen.

Leonardo's Notebooks and Samuel Pepys's Diary

Carl told me a wonderful story from Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci biography. When Isaacson was working with Steve Jobs on his biography, Jobs promised to send over all his journals and notes from the NeXT years. Weeks went by, nothing came. When Isaacson followed up, Jobs admitted the problem - he had typed them into a computer, and even Apple's best engineers could not open the files. The time gap was just ten years.

Meanwhile, Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks - thousands of pages of sketches, ideas, and observations - are still perfectly readable five hundred years after his death. Paper does not need a software update.

Then there is Samuel Pepys, a low-level civil servant in seventeenth-century London who kept a journal for ten years. He wrote about ordinary life - what it was like to be a middle-class married man in London during the plague. We are incredibly lucky to have that journal, because normally history only records the kings and queens. Pepys gave us the real texture of life. If everything had been digital, there is a good chance we would have none of that.

Digital Impermanence Is Real

I shared a similar story with Carl about Steve Albini, the music producer who recorded Nirvana's In Utero. When they prepared a commemorative edition of the album, they could not open some sessions that had been recorded on a digital medium. But the master tapes Albini had recorded on analog reel-to-reel machines were still perfectly fine. They did the mix from those tapes.

Analog will always be readable. You can always open a notebook and read the letters on the page. You can always play back a magnetic recording. Digital formats carry compatibility risks that can make your work unreadable within a single decade. This is not a theoretical concern. It has happened to Steve Jobs and to one of the most important rock albums ever made.

Carl hopes that in three or four hundred years, someone might find his journals and think - so that is what life was really like in Korea in 2025. It sounds humble, but it is actually a profound thought. Your life might feel ordinary to you. It will not feel ordinary to someone reading about it centuries from now.

Paper in a High-Tech Country

I asked Carl whether the popularity of paper journals is mostly a thing for people over forty. He surprised me with a story from South Korea, one of the most high-tech countries on the planet. His wife went back to university a few years ago to study physical therapy, alongside students straight out of high school. Carl asked her what percentage of students use digital tools versus paper notebooks. The answer was roughly sixty-forty - sixty percent digital, forty percent paper. Among the paper users, about seventy percent were women.

Near their home, there is a discount store with an entire floor dedicated to pencil cases, pens, notebooks, and folders. Carl told me he is always amazed at how many middle school and high school kids are in there buying stationery. Paper is not going away. If anything, there is a growing appreciation for the feel of pen on paper. As Carl said - plastic on glass does not work. Even with paper-like screen protectors, it is still tap-tap-tap. You do not get that wonderful sound of a pencil on paper. Or even a scratchy fountain pen with a very fine nib.

The numbers back this up. The global paper notebook market was valued at over 76 billion dollars in 2025 and continues to grow steadily year after year.

The Anti-Convenience Movement

Toward the end of our conversation, Carl said something that stuck with me. He wants to start an anti-convenience movement. All this technology is about convenience. And there are a lot of problems in the world today that are probably connected to our obsession with finding more and more convenient ways of doing things.

Take the rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes. A lot of it comes down to diet, and a lot of those diets are driven by convenience. It is hard to boil potatoes, roast a joint of meat, and prepare vegetables. It is much easier to order something online and have it at your door in thirty minutes. The attraction is obvious. But long term, it is not good for you.

Carl thinks we are at the same stage with convenience technology that we were with smoking in the 1950s. We know it is not great for us, but we tell ourselves it is not that bad. Gradually, over time, we will realize how much it costs us.

Peaceful Productivity

Carl's favorite moment of the week is when he goes to the dining room with an A4 notebook, a couple of pens, a highlighter, and a cup of tea. For an hour or ninety minutes, there is no screen. Just planning, thinking, and creating. He described it in two words: peaceful productivity.

That phrase captures everything we talked about. The point is not to reject technology entirely. Carl uses digital tools every day. The point is to recognize that some things are better done slowly, by hand, with intention. Not because it is more efficient - but because it engages your brain in a way that screens cannot.

If you want to try it, start small. Get a little notebook, write the date at the top, and list the two or three things you absolutely must do today. Keep it on your desk where you can see it. And when you cross those tasks off with a pen at the end of the day - well, Carl says the dopamine hit is ten times better than any app notification.

Pick up a pen. You might be surprised at what it does for you.

Do Your Own Research

Here are peer-reviewed studies and resources on handwriting, cognition, and the topics discussed in this article, grouped by theme.

Handwriting, Memory, and Brain Activation

• Umejima, K. et al. (2021). "Paper Notebooks vs. Mobile Devices: Brain Activation Differences During Memory Retrieval." Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 15, 634158. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.634158
• Mueller, P. A. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking." Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159-1168. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581
• Van der Weel, F. R. & Van der Meer, A. L. H. (2023). "Handwriting but Not Typewriting Leads to Widespread Brain Connectivity: A High-Density EEG Study with Implications for the Classroom." Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1219945. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945
• Ihara, A. S. et al. (2021). "Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evidence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15, 679191. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.679191

Handwriting and Learning in Children

• Longcamp, M. et al. (2008). "Learning Through Hand- or Typewriting Influences Visual Recognition of New Graphic Shapes." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(5), 802-815. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20504
• Marano, G. et al. (2025). "The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing." Life, 15(3), 345. https://doi.org/10.3390/life15030345

Handwriting and Spelling in Schools

• Scientific Reports (2025). "Comparing the Effects of Typing and Handwriting on Spelling Performance in School." Nature Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-03369-x

Digital Impermanence and Preservation

• Library of Congress Digital Preservation resources: https://www.digitalpreservation.gov