If you are constantly dealing with cluttered piles of paper, you are not alone. Only less than 20 years ago, there were fewer office supply stores, less paper copy facilities, and way less printers in business. It is the information age, and paper has yet to depart our dear homes and offices.
The paperless office is not going to happen any time soon. People love to hold a page in their hands, see the glossy color copy, and absorb the information from that perspective. They can take it with them, share it with friends and colleagues, and take action with that page.
Surely, we will evolve into an electronic page soon. But until that time, we all are stuck on those physical pieces of information.
You need to absorb this one idea when it comes to paper; if it can be produced electronically with an internet search or a scan, toss it!
If there is not one reason on this planet for you to keep that page, send it back to the recycling effort. You need to let it flow back into the recycling center nearest you, very, very soon.
If you can not recycle, and need to store, here is a mind process to follow. Learn how to handle the storage process, and revisit the most important idea, to either recycle or save.
1. Look objectively at any piece of paper, and think how the information needs to be archived.
If you are constantly taking information, and saving it until you can find time to review it, stop. You are never going to find the time to read that piece. It just is not going to happen, as there are going to be new and more coming at you very very soon! I would say, save it, if the new information was not coming. If the end of the world came today, of course, there would be no more printed pages. Then that information would be precious. However, it can only be as good as the day it was created. Either scan or recycle. Scan or recycle.
2. Can you live happily without taking any action on that page?
Sometimes, we build up big ideas of what we need to do with information. Do you really need to keep it? If it has collected dust, and you have decided you are going to write a book on that stack, when are you? Is the information available now elsewhere? Have you realized that the book idea could be better handled in another way? Could it just have evolved into a new and better idea? Stop living in the past, and recycle that stack, or place a fire under your action list, and take care of it within a certain amount of time. If you give yourself 2 weeks to act on it, and you do not within that time, it is time to recycle or scan.
3. The only forms to really save
We try this excuse any time we do not know what to do with our legal and lifestyle papers. If you need it for record keeping, it should be archived, and away from your general life. Rent a storage locker, hire a neighbor to help you scan all the materials, or simply shred them all. You need to keep tax forms for 7 years, you need receipts for 1 year, you need to keep any medical files only if you have ongoing medical issues or legal cases pending. After that point of resolution, you only need to keep them for 1 year, and then they can be shredded. How good will it feel to remove this problem from your life! If you have stacks of warranty cards, instructional brochures, maps to places you have visited, trip receipts, fund prospectus copies, medical bills and information, shred them. You can retrieve them online easily with a search, or a credit card statement search.
Emotion can drive us to live forever in stacks and stacks of papers. The constant reminder of things we are always hoping to conquer and conclude can be exhausting. Do not do this to yourself. Learn how to relieve your life from this stress.
You have the power over the paper. Let it go…
In order for you all to become the best person you wish to be, you must first believe it! Do you think that the astronauts who went to the moon, decided when they were young, that they wanted to be bankers? No! They wanted to be astronauts! They knew they loved the stars, they probably bought books home from the library that were dedicated to this passion, and they decided early on, this is who they were. They did not decide that they were firemen, doctors or a lawyer, they wanted to go to space.
