Not only can your youngsters outpace you on the keyboard. When it comes to processing mountains of paperwork, they are fearless. Watch as John’s little daughter deftly digitizes paper that routinely intimidates grown-ups. And her daddy’s visibly relieved that he no longer has to rifle through metal filing cabinets full of countless file folders to find a misplaced invoice or business card.

Scansnap + Evernote = Child’s play

What have you scanned today?

Good news to report on the paperless project. My desk is looking more and more like the peaceful photo on our home page. My stress level is going down and my productivity level is going up. I’ll post some progress photos soon.

Meanwhile, take a look at this video to see how much fun it can be to shred paper that’s weighing you down. This baby is getting a big kick out of watching his daddy shred a job rejection letter. What a great way to make the best of a bad situation.

What have you shredded lately?

That’s why, when it comes to the couple most likely to succeed in taking you paperless, the winner is…
ScanSnap s1100 + Evernote.

It may not be the most sophisticated solution, but going paperless with ScanSnap s1100 + Evernote is easy, easy. easy. So easy, in fact, you could delegate your scanning to a munchkin. Here’s how it works:

- INSERT paper into front of scanner and watch scanner grab it firmly
- PUSH cool blue illuminated button to SCAN
- WATCH paper move through scanner
- PUSH cool blue illuminated button to STOP scanning
- CLICK Evernote PDF icon on ScanSnap pop-up Quick Menu
- WATCH as text recognition (OCR) is performed on scanned page
- MARVEL as Evernote opens and displays a searchable PDF of your scanned page

That’s it. One insert. One click. Two pushes.

Now toss your no-longer-need-to-keep-this paper in the trash and dance around your desk to celebrate how smart you are. You have discovered to secret to going paperless. Paper no longer controls you.

You can find anything you want. Anytime you want. Anywhere you want. Evernote stores all your information until you need it again. When you do, you can view it from your computer, your smartphone, or any other computer connected to the Web.

You don’t have to name your scans. You don’t have to put them in folders. You don’t even have to remember keywords. Evernote has a very powerful search box. Simply type in any word you remember from your scanned page and Evernote’s photographic memory will display the pages that contain that word.

Told you it was easy.

(If you must complicate this, you can find more details here and here.)

Last month I bought a new HP printer. While I love the feature that lets me wirelessly send photos to it via an iPhone app, it still drinks ink like it’s been stranded in a desert for days on end. Just this week I spent nearly $100 to replace its five ink cartridges.

So, I am thrilled to see the release of this new printer that–drumroll, please!–requires no ink. None. Zilch. Nada.

How cool is that?

Of course if you do the math, converting yen to USD, you’ll find that the cost is way out of reach. But if Moore’s Law extends to printer technology, we could see this reach an acceptable price level at some point.

photo: flickr/svennevenn

Just when you’d resigned yourself to a forecast of gray skies with nary a party in sight, here’s a reason to celebrate:

It’s National Procrastination Week.

We all have reasons why we procrastinate. Good reasons.

I certainly have mine. Chief among them—my PC flashed me with its blue screen of death a few weeks ago. My productivity ground to a halt. I limped along on my laptop and my cell, but since my scanner was PC-only, my paperless quest had to wait.

Until I was able to order a scanner for my new iMac and get back in the business of going paperless once again, that is. Today, I set up my new ScanSnap S1500M and configured it to work with Evernote. It took a little time to get the settings just right, but now I’m ready to give it another go.

I just finished scanning a stack of papers that’s been accumulating on my desk, and I feel so much better! Because if there’s anything procrastinators secretly relish, it’s the magical moments in which we temporarily defeat our foe.

So, if you count procrastination as one of your vices, join in! Raise a glass to the way you’ve perfected this skill over the years.

And then do something.

Order a ScanSnap and plot the demise of your paper piles.

To hear his tunes, check out his website. To watch him convert walls of music books and drawers of files from paper to digital, have a look at his video. Here you go.

I love the part where he dumps all the paper out after he completes his project. And his comments about what he’s going to keep in all those empty drawers and display on all those newly available shelves.

I wonder if his creativity soared once he shrunk all that paper down to…well, I don’t want to spoil the ending. Watch it and see for yourself.

Thanks for sharing this video, Jason. You’re an inspiration. Rock on!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQUg6e69Vho

This video raises some good points about our paper usage. And it illustrates how much of a difference we can make by changing some of our paper consumption habits.

What small change in your paper usage could you make that might have a big payoff?

photo: flickr/curiousyellow

I hate to file.

It’s not that I reject the whole concept of filing, it’s just that filing never seems important enough to float to the top of my to-do list. That’s probably why I have stacks of paper everywhere.

Now, don’t misunderstand: I do have paper files. It’s just that I don’t make the time to maintain them. So, if I filed it long, long ago, and it’s recorded in my Paper Tiger filing software, I can retrieve it in a matter of minutes. But since I don’t devote time to routine maintenance of my paper files, most things simply sit around in a collection of boxes and bins. I know they’re there—somewhere—but I can’t put my finger on them when I want them, so it’s not a good way to work.

Living a paperless life is going to change all that.

I’ve come to the realization that I am not a librarian. It’s not my job to sort and classify my information. As long as I can use a simple search function to call up the information I need, wherever and whenever I need it, I no longer have a need for filing. Search trumps filing every time.*

And since I no longer need to file my stuff in order to keep it in an organized manner, I also get to skip the tedious process of deciding which pieces of paper are worth keeping. Digital scans take such little space, and storage just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. So, that whole routine of evaluating every piece of paper that passes through my hands no longer applies.

Just scan it, and forget it.

If it ends up belonging to the 80% of the files I will never need to reference again, so be it. At least I haven’t invested precious hours in deciding whether to keep it or toss it, classifying it with file folder labels or tags, or trying to cram it in an already overstuffed file cabinet.

It simply exists, ready to serve me in the future, if and when I want to refer to it again.

It’s a beautiful thing.
 
 
* Well, almost every time. I still maintain paper copies of signed legal documents, like contracts, but that applies to a very small number of the papers that I handle.
 

photo: flickr/okreitz

There may be as many reasons for going paperless as there are people who attempt it.
Here are some of mine.

1. to reduce my stress level
2. to become better organized
3. to increase my productivity
4. to increase my creativity
5. to increase my sense of peace and well-being
6. to have a tidier space in which to work
7. to avoid having to file papers
8. to be able to search everything effortlessly
9. to be able to retrieve my information while away from the office
10. to protect my information in the event of a disaster

I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t listed any oft-cited going-green benefits.

Going paperless does have a multitude of environmental benefits, including saving trees, decreasing emission of greenhouse gasses, and reducing fuel consumption. And these are all important factors that may influence our individual decisions to go paperless.

But I know I will need some strong what’s-in-it-for-me motivations to make it through this transition. And that’s why I’ve chosen to compile the list in this manner.

What reasons—either selfish or altruistic—can you add to the list?

Feast your eyes on this. While this is clearly represents Bonnier’s work, not Apple’s, it illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future. (It takes a minute for them to get to the good stuff, but, believe me, it’s worth the wait.) You can follow more of the discussion on Bonnier’s R&D site.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

How would you like to have one of these to peruse with your morning coffee? Would you lament the demise of your favorite magazine if you could still enjoy the content in a digital format this rich and engaging? Are you nearly overcome with buyer’s remorse for that Kindle or nook or Sony Reader you’ve been enjoying?