Going Paperless

Being so inherently digital, you might never think that I have an obsession with paper.  I love the way it looks, and the way it feels.  I especially enjoy a clean sheet of paper.  I always remember how happy I was to pull out a new sheet of paper in school, and how sad I was to have to write on it.  The first words I wrote on the sheet always had to be perfect, if they weren't then it felt like I let the paper down.  I do still rely a lot on paper.  I like holding paper books (although audio is quickly becoming my preferred format), and journal articles on paper (yes I print them from databases, it's so difficult to read them online).  I still buy paper calendars every year that I stop using after a few months.  I prefer to read my magazines analog style.  I buy notebooks that mostly remain unused (with the exception of my moleskine, which only works because I have imposed no organizational system to confuse and befuddle its purpose as a notebook of randomness).

Given all that, I always thought I would be the last person in the world to finally say, "I'm going paperless."  Well it's time.  Paper is controlling my life, and it's sucking my time.  I really believe it's beyond GTD too.  Paper just seems to be the way we operate, even still in a digital world.  There's the junk mail, the non-junk mail, the paper receipts, the little notes we write to remember, the keepsakes.  We're drowning in it, and a lot of it is because we just like paper.  Paper is a thing we can touch, and see.  Paper has a place, and if doesn't have a place you can make a place for it.  Digital exists in random formats, it can exist in many places at once.  Some of us still have not been able to wrap our heads around digital, but the shift will happen, and needs to happen.  Sometimes paper is good, and we need it, but often, with the right tools, it's not necessary.  This epiphany has been brewing for awhile.  It seems every few months I spend entire weekends sorting through paper.  Weekends that could be better spent doing other things. 

How do you go paperless in a paper filled world?  Like with most digital technologies, the way a person uses it, and the tools that they use are a matter of personal balance.  My desire to become paperless seems a bit schizophrenic at times too.  The tools depend on the place I'm at, or the access I have at that moment.  The key is to know what tools you have an how to use them.  However I do admit this is rather natural for a librarian, this is how we approach our jobs.

Mail is a huge issue, my solution is to try to deal with it as it comes in.  This doesn't always work for me, and at the moment it's a bit piled up.  Moving bills and statements to paperless is a step in the right direction though.  Plus it's now in my inbox, which is grand central to my life.  From there I can delegate to Sandy or deal with it as it comes in. 

Where I've made the most success is with receipts.  I just don't take them anymore.  I never did anything with them anyway.  If I do get them, they no longer go in my wallet, where they would pile up for years, they now go in my purse where I shred/recycle them when I get home.  I now keep track of my expenses when I'm out using Xpenser.  This simple web app takes my expenses either by Jott, Twitter, IM or SMS, and yes I have used all of them depending on the situation.  Jott works well when I'm recording messages by myself.  If I don't want to announce to the world how much money I just spent at Borders then I use SMS.  Sitting at my computer IM and Twitter also work very well.  I get an email, which is a nice reminder to transfer those purchases to Quicken the next time I'm at my computer, a practice I sometimes neglected in the past has taken a drastic upswing with a few simple changes in productivity. 

An added bonus of Xpenser is tracking my gas mileage.  When I purchase gas I also send the price I paid per gallon and my car's current mileage to Xpenser in the note field.  I use these numbers to then update FuelFrog next time I'm at my computer so I can keep an eye out on my current mileage.  All without bothering with little bits of paper.  The reports make it easy to glance at similar purchases at once for quick comparisons of purchases.

My new favorite tool is Evernote.  The updated version of this note taking service is now in public beta and I think it's a fabulous way to sync information from computer to web.  The mobile version is currently inaccessible to me and my phone, but I think when I finally get a decent phone this will be an indispensable app.  I don't care for the Windows client interface, but it works, and it can still sync to digital.  I've already determined that Evernote would be a service that I would actually pay money for because it is incredibly useful.  I'm able to integrate this with Jott, I can call in notes directly to Evernote without being at my computer or online with my phone.  I would love to use Evernote as a repository of all things digital and all things that become digital.

The bridge to all of these things for me has really been my phone.  My failure with paper has been syncing the digital with the analog.  One day I realized that when I'm not at my computer I do always have my phone, that's when the eureaka moment hit me.  I can use voice, or text, or the phone's browser to keep the flow of information digital without being at my computer to produce a digital output.  It works, and it's because of these tools, and the APIs, and the simple ways that these systems talk to one another that it does work. 

Once I clear the paper off of it, I will be using my scanner more to archive things in digital formats.  I want this stuff out of my life (in the physical sense) and not taking up space.  I hope less paper also means more time for blogging, which I noticed has taken an obvious dip in the past month.  Now you know it's because I'm buried up to my neck in paper.