Tips & Stories

Why I Went Paperless (Contributed Post by Evernote Ambassador Jamie Rubin)

Posted by Jamie Rubin on 28 Nov 2011

Posted by Jamie Rubin on 28 Nov 2011

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Name: Jamie Rubin
Location: Virginia
Evernote Ambassador: Paperless Lifestyle
Website: www.jamietoddrubin.com
Twitter: @jamietr
Go to the Paperless discussion forum

 

Hello, from your Paperless Lifestyle Ambassador

 

I suppose it seems odd that a writer would go paperless. Writers produce books made of paper, write articles printed on paper. Paper, one would think, is the canvas on which a writer creates. So why go paperless? There are three reasons I went paperless, two of which are practical and one of which was a challenge to myself.
  1. To eliminate clutter and save space. My home office has bookshelves filled to the brim with books. I have no more space for new books. So I buy almost all of my new books in e-book format. Digital documents take up very little physical space. This makes my wife happy. The technology is available to store all of my paper digitally and Evernote makes it easy to do.
  2. To have instant, ubiquitous access to all of my documents. Given how much we use devices like iPhones and iPads these days, it seems like it would be remarkably easy to have instant access to any of my digital documents. I can already do this with the books I own in e-book format so why not my other documents? I like being able to access my notes for the story that I am working on no matter where I am. It has proven convenient to be able to pull up a homeowner association budget while sitting at a meeting. Evernote, with its ability to store, tag and make searchable even my scanned documents makes this ubiquitous access remarkably easy.
  3. To prove that a paperless office isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream. For years I’ve heard that we are moving toward a paperless office — but when push comes to shove, people seem hesitant to go paperless. I decided that I was going to see for myself whether a paperless office was really possible. There is a bit of a time investment getting started, but I have to say that having been paperless now for nearly a year, the time it has saved me in searching through piles, and the convenience it has added has more than made up for that initial time investment.

My process


One thing I learned early on: I  can go paperless, but the rest of the world still uses paper. Paper still enters my daily life, and must be accounted for. So I established a habit for getting rid of any paper that came in as quickly as I could. Writers live for the mail. It is ingrained in my soul to check the mailbox as soon as I get home from work. I then deal with this paper — and any others that might have accumulated — once each day as soon as I bring the mail in the house. If I am given paper at some other time during the day (maybe I get a pay stub from work) I put that into a paper “inbox” on my desk for processing at the same time I process my mail. My process looks like this:
    1. Check the mailbox after work
    2. Toss out the junk
    3. If anything is left, determine if I need to scan it.
    4. Scan to Evernote
    5. Do I need to keep the original? If not, shred it, otherwise file it.
    6. Check my paper inbox
    7. Repeat steps 4-5
This daily effort has become part of my routine. It takes less than 10 minutes, often less than five. A few important things to highlight about my process:
  • In step 3, determining if I need to scan something is the most significant decision in the process. I only scan items that I think I will need again in the future, and that are not otherwise available in electronic format. So I might scan a property tax statement, but I won’t scan a copy of the gas bill, which is available to me online through the gas company website.
  • In step 4, to scan to Evernote, I use the Canon P-150 portable scanner for Macintosh. It comes ready to scan directly to Evernote at the push of a button, can scan both sides of a page at the same time, and can do something like 15 pages per minute. It is compact and takes up very little space on my desk. It works great and I love it!
  • Step 5 is a reminder to myself that there are some things you have to hold onto, my infant daughter’s social security card, for instance.

Tips for getting started

 

Here are some tips for getting started going paperless with Evernote:

 

  1. Establish a daily routine. Don’t worry about going back through old records, at least not at the beginning. Establish a daily routine that works for you, make it habit, converting each day’s paper to digital form. Once you’ve gotten into the habit you can, if you wish, go back and scan old paper.
  2. Figure out your organization structure. Think about how you want to organize your documents before you get started, but try to keep the taxonomy simple. Remember that Evernote has some great search capabilities, including the ability to make PDFs searchable. I rely much more on the search feature than on tagging because I can search faster than I can tag everything.
  3. Access notes, even without a connection. If you use a mobile device like an iPhone or an iPad, consider turning on the “Offline Notebook*” feature for those notebooks you want to have access to even when you have no Internet connection. I have a “paperless filing cabinet” notebook that contains the bulk of my documents and I can access anything in that notebook even if I am not connected. Keep in mind the initial synchronization might take a little while, depending on the size of the notebook. [Learn more about Offline Notebooks]

*This is a Premium feature.

Join the Paperless Lifestyle Twitter Chat

Jamie will be hosting a Twitter Chat about Paperless Lifestyle in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for the announcement!

Jamie anchors the Paperless Lifestyle discussion over at our Lifestyle forum. Join the discussion here.

Check out some of Jamie’s on his blog about living the paperless lifestyle:

Using Evernote as a surrogate memory; or answering the question: when did ‘x’ happen?
How Evernote has helped me go paperless
Going iPad, Part 3: Note-taking, Evernote and Science Fiction Conventions
Managing my writing life with Evernote

The Evernote Ambassador Program

Evernote Ambassadors are amazing individuals that are here to teach, share and help you get more out of Evernote. Learn more about Ambassadors and consider submitting your story.

Join the conversation happening in our Lifestyle Forum to connect with Ambassadors and other Evernote users.
Join the conversation

Download Ambassador Guides

Drap and drop them into a New Note or attach them to a note so you can access them from any computer or mobile device where you have Evernote installed!

Joshua Zerkel’s Productivity Tips (PDF)
Brandie Kajino’s Organization Tips (PDF)
Carley Knobloch’s Spring Cleaning Tips (PDF)

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74 Comments RSS

  • Rob —

    I have been almost completely paperless for almost 2 years now, I dump everything into Evernote and sort it out from there. Problem is that other people always keep handing me stuff on paper, even though I specifically ask them not to. I try to promote the paperless lifestyle as much as I can, but it’s hard going.

    At work we have top quality all-in-one copiers, that scan fast, double-sided, but most importantly, to a very small file size, even if it it dozens of pages in color, filesize is rarely above 1Mb, usually only several hundreds of kb, and the quality is always excellent. My scanner at home is just a low-end inkjet, and even though I try to tweak the settings as much as possible to obtain a small file size, I always get these huge files, several mb’s, even though quality and sharpness have been compromised for the sake of bits. So I take everything, also my paper mail, with me to work, and scan everything there. Works just fine, unless I’m out of the office for several days. Than I can’t wait to get back to the office to start scanning that stuff into evernote. I even feel uncomfortable with those papers in the house over the weekend, I want to get rid of it as soon as I can. …
    Hi, I’m Rob…and I’m an evernote addict…I need a scan several times a day, and when I can’t scan, I get the shakes.

    Reply
  • Mark VanOuse —

    Jamie, great job and excellent information to help us jump start the leap to paperless.

    Reply
  • Chuck Teller —

    Jamie – what about the enhancement to your process:

    When you scan your postal mail and identify the junk, you posted your images to our service (catalogchoice.org) and we fulfill opt-out requests with direct marketers and other companies that mail you? That stops the waste at the source. Contact me via email if you want to discuss this enhancement to your process. We run the nation’s largest junk mail removal service (http://www.catalogchoice.org). We have recently enhanced our service to process scanned images for people.

    Best,

    Chuck

    Reply
  • Alessandra —

    I keep telling nyself I have to go paperless but I cannot decide what hierarchy is best for storing e erything: work stuff, home, travel ideas, photos, hobbies, etc. Any suggestions?

    Reply
    • Sally —

      Alessandra,

      I think of paperless filing in the same way as if you would have to file paper. I started out with just stuff I didn’t mind “losing” like ideas to decorate my house or recipes. Once I got comfortable with my system, I then applied it to my more important stuff.

      Reply
  • Jason Grant —

    I’ve been doing this for the last 7 years (at least).

    Haven’t sent a single piece of snail mail for probably around 4-5 years now.

    Even the most arcane of organisations now that require you to ‘sign and post’ something back to them, will happily accept signed, scanned and emailed copy.

    Reply
  • Paulo —

    Writers haven´t created things on paper since wordprocessors are around… but I do get the point :)
    I wish I was as disciplined about not using paper as the author of this post. I have all the tools, but changing the behaviours is not easy.
    Captain Kirk managed a paperless Starship in 1963 (or was it 2245?). I guess being closer to the future has not as much to do with technology as one think. Tools don´t do the work for themselves…

    Reply
  • DanB —

    Great post. I work with the country’s largest billers and it’s actually hard for them to move their customers off paper. In other words, when offered a paperless option, most people will not turn off the paper mail. Typically we see way less than 20% adoption so it’s refreshing to read this article and all of the great responses.

    Reply
  • Johnny —

    Thanks for the great post. I am a flow chart wonk, so it was right up my alley. However, I have a PC and a wireless scanner, but don’t understand how “scan to Evernote” is implemented. Also, once you do scan directly to Evernote, are you prompted to tag the file, do you have to move to specific notebook…. It seems like Step 4 needs its own sub-flow chart.

    Reply
    • Jamie Todd Rubin —

      Johnny, I use the Canon P-150M scanner for my Mac. On it is a programmable button. You can configure what program is opened when that button is pressed and where the scans are sent. One of the default options that came with the scanner software was Evernote. So, I slide the pages into the scanner, push the button and they are scanned. A few seconds later a new Evernote note window pops up with the scanned PDF already attached. I have to give it a title, and I can also tag it.

      I can see how this should have probably been called out as a separate step on the flow chart, but I’ve been doing it this way for a while and it seems like all one step to me.

      Reply
      • Ben —

        Jamie,

        Have you heard about the Canon P-215 scanner that just recently came out in mid-November? I was just about to order the P-150 model like you have but then did some more research into what else Canon had and found this one. It looks very similar to the P-150 and has a built in card reader (which I don’t know if I really need since I will be using it for more personal use). It’s about $40 more though so I think I might just order the P-150. Any thoughts on the P-215 model or anyone know more about it?

        Ben

        Reply
    • Thomas —

      Hi Johnny, I am on a Windows PC and Android phone. I have a HP inkjet scanner (basic) that I scan to a default “Reference” file on my desktop. I have set my system up that my “Reference” file automatically syncs with my default Notebook, named “!nbox” in Evernote. I follow the GTD methodology, so I just Tag and move scanned items to appropriate Notebooks in Evernote from there.

      I basically use Evernote as my GTD trusted system.

      Reply