Living in a Paperless World
At first, the dream of the computer age was to lessen that dependency on paper. Well, out of the gate there was an immediate reversal on that goal. People started printing off documents in duplicate, triplicate, etc. . . . in alarming quantities. I guess people were just not used to the idea of not having a hard copy of that document. In their defense, small and uncomfortable screens did make it really hard to read stuff on a computer. But we have come a long way since those early dark days of ole.
I have been paper free for close to two years now. There is no in-box on my desk, there is no file cabinet in my office. In fact, I don’t even have a pen on my desk. What do I have to write on?
So, how do you go paperless? It is easy really. Don’t use paper. Follow these simple steps to remove paper from your life:
- You need a computer. If you don’t use a computer, going paperless can be really hard to do. A desktop will do, but if you have a laptop, this can really make this easier.
- Look at all the paper files around your desk. Ask yourself, “Do I need all of this?” The answer most likely will be, no. Look through those files and keep what you absolutely need and shred the rest.
- The stuff you have to keep, make use of your closest scanner and scan in these docs.
- Find the right desktop document manager that will work for you. For the love of Pete, don’t replace paper with an unmanageable series of poorly named word docs. NOTE!!! Folders stuffed with Word docs is the enemy. Before you know it, you have docs all over the place. Organization is way to hard to stay on top of. Searching, yeah right. Right out of the gate, this is NOT a good solution.
- Google Docs. This a great way to mange documents. Uses Google’s system of tagging and saved searches to manage your docs. And of course the search is amazing. Drawback, you are 100% in the cloud. If you can’t get online, you can’t access docs.
- Journler (Mac). Awesome application. Totally forward thinking about managing documents using categories and tags. Use smart folders to organize documents in real time. Let the app mange for you. After all, isn’t that computers are for? Drawback, no cloud support. Your docs are locked to your desktop.
- Evernote (Mac/PC). Awesome application. Again, totally forward thinking about desktop document management. Use a system of tags and attributes to organize documents in real time. GREAT cloud support. All your docs are synced with the Evernote server where you can access docs from any browser anywhere. That is COOL! Even cooler - they have an iPhone specific version to access docs. Now these guys are talking my language. Drawback, Evernote has gone through some serious re-visioning, it appears that they rebuilt the app from the ground up. So there are missing features. At the time of this post, there is not the support to create a bulleted list. I am sure that this will be resolved soon.
- MS OneNote. This is a PC only solution. Haven’t ever used it, but I have PC peers who say that this is the next best thing to sliced bread. So I guess that it is worth looking into.
- The documents that you decided to save and scan in before, upload, attach or import these docs int your chosen document management solution.
- Now, this is a hard ad one. Lets take a look at our computer. Now that we have chosen a document management solution that will fit our needs, upload, import or attach these legacy digital docs into the management solution.
- Maintain the discipline. Now that you have purged all the paper from your life, don’t let it back in. Need to jot a note? Don’t grab scrap paper, open a new doc from your manager. If it can be printed, it can be made into a PDF. When someone hands you a hard copy, scan it, shred it and file it in your doc manager or ask upfront if you can only receive digital versions. Ask all your co-workers to not hand you printed docs. Slowly it will happen, one day you will discover that you are no longer handling paper at all.
At first it may be a little challenging. There is that urge to grab for a sticky note. I exclusively use a Mac and a great feature is a Sticky note widget. Just as fast as I can grab a pad of stickies and a pen, I can create a new virtual note. And these won’t fall off my screen and get lost.
Stick with it. You can do it. I know you can! Together we can change the world.