The Myth of the Paperless Office

Computers were going to wipe out paper. That’s what we believed back at the dawn of the PC era. Twenty-six years later, people are still overwhelmed by the stuff.

Face it, getting rid of paper completely won’t happen. It’s too big a part of our lives. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be as big a part. It’s like going on a diet. You don’t cut out food entirely, just decrease the portions. That’s how energy researcher Bruce Nordman, with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, put it when I interviewed him recently for my story on reducing use of office paper for IncTechnology.com.

Since last fall, I’ve been on a mission to reduce my own paper consumption. I have a practical reason and a philosophical one. On the practical side, I have one two-drawer file cabinet in my office for tax records, important papers and work files. The less work-related paper I generate, the more room I have for receipts and tax forms. On the philosophical side, I’m trying to reduce, recycle and reuse all kinds of things, and cutting back on paper fits into that.

Here are my top 5 ways writers and home-based workers can go paperless:

1. Ditch the scratch pad – I’ve always been a major list maker. Now I put daily and other to-do lists in the Tasks section of Outlook. The program’s Notes section is good for keeping track of books I want to read, ideas for birthday presents and my resume. If you don’t like Outlook, there are plenty of Web-based applications like it, such as Google Notebook.

2. Mark up story notes on screen. I’m embarrassed to admit I just started using the highlighter feature on Word. It makes it easy to do the same kind of mark up on notes that I used to do with a paper print out and yellow highlighter pen. When I write, I use the split screen feature of Windows to open my notes file and my story file at the same time.

3. Use a bookmark service for research. Del.icio.us, the social bookmark service, is great for tracking information for stories or other research. It’s easy to use. Sign up, find sites you want to save, tag them with key words, then use the tags to sort through what you’ve saved.

4. Ask collaborators to use Track Changes. This feature of Word is standard operating procedure for most writers and editors, but it’s amazing how many other people don’t use it or even know that it’s there.

5. When you have to use a printer, do it judiciously. Some things you have to print. When you do, print to both sides of a piece of paper. Set printer controls to print out multiple pages per sheet of paper. Set printers so they won’t print out test pages when they’re turned on. If you use company letterhead, create a Word template you can be print out as needed.

You can find more tips for eliminating office paper at a Website energy researcher Bruce Nordman created 10 years ago called Cutting Paper. The information hasn’t been updated for a while, but Nordman promises it’s still valid. And he’s looking for some green-souled individual or group to take over running it. Interested? Drop him a line at the lab.