When I first heard about World Paper Free Day, it was one of those “Pause and Reflect” moments for me. Looking around, I saw that I was surrounded by paper in both my personal and professional life. It’s something that I really never took full stock of before WPFD.

By taking a serious look into how I was interacting with and managing paper, I could see many inefficiencies (ie. “time suckers”) were tied directly to paper – and saw that paper was really managing me. I needed another way.

Basically, the best and easiest way to personally become Paper Free is to limit or eliminate the use of paper from the beginning. To start down the path of Paper Free needs to include technologies and a new approach that can reduce the need for and reliance on paper.

To become Paper Free in my personal life, I approached the task from three key paper touchpoints:

1.        When I Receive Paper
I started with looking at how I could stop receiving paper into my life. I knew that if I could reduce or eliminate receiving paper, then I could reduce or eliminate paper right from the beginning. In other words, by starting with an electronic viewpoint, the paper could start to disappear from my life.

2.        When I Produce Paper
If I could reduce or eliminate bringing (receiving) paper into my life, then I could take the next step and stop producing paper. I started by looking at how to reduce or eliminate the printing of paper, the use of paper to capture notes, or simply reuse paper. If I could accomplish this, then I knew I could eliminate most, if not all, of the paper in my life.

3.        When I (had to) Retain, Store and/or Exchange paper
Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to be 100% Paper Free. Some activities beyond my control still require paper. For example, my bank still gives me a paper-based copy for any account or instruction changes.

For those paper items within my control, I would have to find a way to convert the paper to an electronic form and/or seek an equivalent electronic form of the paper item.


With these three steps, this is what I accomplished over the month of October:

Eliminated bringing paper into my life

• eBilling. I either signed up for eBilling or made a request to any organization that bills me (Credit Card, Utility, Cable, Bank statements etc) to send the invoice electronically via email.
• Newspapers, Magazines & Books. For more than I can remember, I’ve read my news online. Over the last month, I’ve experimented with eBooks and magazines using a combination of Amazon Kindle and Indigo Kobo off my Android device. I’ve found I’m reading more and getting through the books faster.

• Stopped Printing. I’ve stopped printing emails and web pages, bookmarking them instead. As an alternate, I’ve started using an online annotation service(Diigo ) for web pages and Adobe Acrobat for a PDF copy needed elsewhere
• Smarter organization. I’ve pushed action items into my calendar. This not only eliminated the paper, but also prioritized my actions. This is a technique from David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. The end result so far has been my ability to focus more on immediate tasks while getting things done faster
• Note Taking. I started to leverage Blogger (in private mode) to capture some quick notes, whether on my phone or the PC - resulting in making my notes accessible from anywhere. Also, in meetings, I brought my laptop with me to capture notes and actions for the group
• Google Apps for web-based needs. I’m a head coach of a soccer team. I need to capture the training or game attendance. For this purpose, I created a web form using Google Docs. No need to carry around a paper clipboard anymore. Accessible from the smartphone, just touch and submit
• Smarter Printing. I maximize the space on the page. Depending on what is going to be printed, I either print on both sides of the page or print 2 pages per side. Print preview is my friend – so I only print what I need and don’t produce waste. Before printing, Proof read: Check Twice. Print once.  I might even consider leveraging a smaller font, reduced margins or reduced line spacing for printing draft documents in the future
• Recycling Paper. When I had to use paper (ie, producing a grocery shopping list), I reused the blank space on some paper I’ve already received – typically the back of an envelope or junk faxes received in the office

• Scan and Shred. There are some paper items that I want to keep and need – important documents, articles, etc. So, I started scanning the paper – capturing as much as possible in electronic form, then storing the resultant PDF on an external hard drive (see below). For those items I want to access anywhere and are not personal or confidential in nature, I’ll probably look to move them into a free online service like Google Docs, DropBox or box.net. Anything I scanned, I immediately shredded to eliminate the need to retain the paper
• External Hard Drive. I set up an external hard drive (500gb drive is < $50, more than I’ll ever need.) to save the electronic copy in an organized file system. Again, I could have saved them online through a free service like Google Docs, DropBox or box.net, but I wanted to keep my information private and within my complete control
• Purchased a backup drive for security purposes. The one thing about paper is that outside of a fire, store it in a dry place and it will outlive you. Too bad I couldn’t say the same thing about the external drive – so I purchased another one for $50, and use it as a backup. That way, if one goes down, I still have all my important records, receipts, and documents

• More organized. Because I started to organize myself electronically to eliminate the need of paper, it forced me to look at how to organize myself electronically. This led me to David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. I’m better organized as a result of using the GTD system
• Less clutter. On my desk, in my desk, in my notebook bag. Being organized electronically has focused me as well on my priorities
• Easier Centralization. Because everything has been centralized, there is only one spot to access my stuff. Since there is only one point of access, it becomes really easy to remember where things are kept, etc.  Centralization also means that I can access the bulk of the information anywhere