Summary

This week's episode starts with a confession: some of the highest performing advisors and entrepreneurs I coach use a physical planner as their most important high-performance tool, and they have been quietly wondering if they should apologize for it. The story underneath is personal: I tried going all digital after years of building my business with a daily planner, and I lost the clarity that made this analog approach work in the first place. My thoughts around this approach changed when I reframed this analog approach as my "dress rehearsal" for the day and the week. Until I built the dress rehearsal, a practice of transferring the day's plan from screen to paper that I have done every day since 2011. The principle is plain: the planner is not a backup plan, it is the dress rehearsal, and the neuroscience says your brain knows the difference.

What you will walk away with from this episode:

• Why the highest performing advisors and entrepreneurs I coach use a physical planner as their most important tool, and why you should stop apologizing if you are one of them

• The story of going all digital and what broke: I had access to every piece of information and clarity about none of it, until I went back to the planner and built the dress rehearsal

• The neuroscience: a 2023 study found handwriting activates far more brain networks than typing, particularly in the parietal regions tied to memory and processing, while typing puts the brain on autopilot

• The goal data: people who write their goals by hand are 33% more successful at achieving them than people who only think about them, because writing forces a different level of encoding

• Why the $5.2 billion planner market is growing, not shrinking: professionals are returning to analog after discovering that all-digital does not produce the clarity they need

• The dress rehearsal defined: the daily practice of reviewing the day's digital calendar and writing the plan by hand with three priorities, the time blocks that matter, and nothing else. This practice can be in the morning or at the end of your day.

• One challenge: do the dress rehearsal today and every day for seven days then notice what changes about how you start your mornings.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: The High-Performance Tool
01:00 Why a Physical Planner is Essential
01:56 The Power of Writing vs. Typing
02:56 Personal Experience with Digital and Analog
03:52 Research on Brain Activation During Handwriting
04:51 The Concept of the Dress Rehearsal
05:48 Neuroscience Findings on Handwriting
07:13 Goals and Handwriting Success Rates
08:09 The Growing Market for Analog Planners
09:11 The Trend Toward Hybrid Planning
10:09 Your Planner as a Dress Rehearsal
10:53 Embracing the Analog Approach
11:52 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Jim Miller's Email: jim@askjimmiller.com to sign up for newsletter.