I love using paper to take notes. It seems right to pull out my notebook, jot some stuff down, and use my own personal secret codes to assign meaning to important stuff and things to do. But, man, I am killing a bunch of trees by doing this. And Mother Nature is frowning at me in a fierce way. So, as the world goes paperless, I decided to get off my butt, heed Mother Nature’s mandate, and do my part. I’m going paperless, people!
I know you’re laughing because you’ve heard it before. This paperless office talk has been going on since the first email hit a desktop computer inbox in the eighties. But I know it’s real now because I’ve been watching those Millenials and Generation Z folk, and they’re embracing this thing like nobody business. You don’t see them pulling notebooks and such out during meetings and throwing them on the conference room table. Nope, they pull out their phones, tablets and other marvelous gadgets and quietly take notes while us old Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers continually interrupt the meeting with yet annoying turn of the page from our trusty spiral.
I’ve seen the light though. It seems odd that an old curmudgeon like me, a Baby Boomer holdout, is thinking about kicking the good old spiral and yearly planner to the curb. But the world continues to go paperless. And more people are embracing it. So, I guess it’s time that I embrace it as well. So, I’m going to give it a try to see how it goes. And why am I doing it? Simple. It’s good for the environment, it simplifies my life and it is portable.
The Paperless Office is Good for the Environment
It takes a lot of trees and energy to make paper. Sure, I still use more than my fair share, but I am trying to get better. I do want to use our precious natural resources responsibly and do my part to shrink my carbon footprint. So, this is just one way to contribute to a better world for us all.
It Simplifies My Life
No more file cabinets, old notebooks, and extraneous pieces of paper with cryptic notes on them scattered about. It is so much easier to file stuff electronically. Going paperless makes me more organized and efficient.
It’s Portable!
It is so cool that I can now take tons of notebooks with me, wherever I travel, and they all will fit nicely in an electronic file cabinet on my iPad or within one of the many cloud services out there.
Old Faithful is Still on Standby
Don’t get me wrong, though, I ‘ll still have my trusty spiral notebook on standby. And if technology fails me during a meeting, you’d better believe I’ll unzip my backpack in a heartbeat and pull my venerable writing instruments and paper out. But, that’s only a fallback. I plan to go paperless and to start using the two or three note-taking apps that I’ve purchased and have been resting dormant on my iPad. Apps like Notability, Goodnotes and iAnnotate.
Finally, so that I could get started the right way, but still hold on to an old connection to the past, I my own electronic version of college-ruled notebook paper. And to encourage you to join me in this paperless office initiative, I’m giving this electronic paper to anyone who wants to download it. (Just follow the link below). You can import it into any of the major note-taking commercial apps (it doesn’t work with iOS Notes, and Google Keep). Personally, I use it in Notability and GoodNotes.
Anyways, download away! And please, if you get a moment, drop me a note to tell me how you are coming along with your paperless office experience.
