Being organized is like dieting.
In this column, I'm going to share some tips about going paperless for your notes at work or school, but first, I have to tell you why being organized is like dieting.
To lose weight, all you have to do is intake fewer calories than you expend. Simple enough, right? Fat chance! Anyone who has tried to lose weight or struggled to maintain weight knows that success has almost nothing whatsoever to do with calorie calculations, and everything to do with the hundreds of choices you make each day. It's a psychological challenge as much as a physical one. Do you eat one more bite or not? Do you eat two more bites? Should you rest now so that you can work out longer later? Does your coffee need real sugar, artificial sweetener, or nothing? Cumulatively, it's the answers and resulting actions to all these tiny choices that tip the scale.
A diet is nothing more than a set of rules to help you make choices, but you must follow those rules and act on them a certain percentage of the time for it to work.
So what does dieting have to do with organization and ditching paper?
The Rules
To adopt a paperless lifestyle, you need rules. The rules are everything. If you pick the wrong rules for you or ambitiously try to implement too many rules, you'll set yourself up for failure.
Here are some suggestions for rules—or more accurately, suggestions for how to craft the right rules for you—that you'll need to go paperless with your office or school notes.
1. Go paperless for what?
Do not try to quit paper cold turkey. Pick one specific area where you will give up paper notes. At the office, narrow down your paperless note-taking to comprise only meeting notes, or only meeting notes for a certain project. Another idea would be to only tackle your in-office to-do list. If you're a student or educator, pick one class or project.
This rule in part serves to make your first paperless effort a trial. Before you can quit paper in all areas of your work or academic life, you need to see what works and what doesn't. When you start to see what isn't working, you'll be able to troubleshoot it more effectively if the problems are only affecting one slice of your professional or academic life.
Rule No. 1: "I will go paperless in/for …" and fill in the blank.
2. What will you record and when?
What notes will you record? If you were naming a file with your future notes, what would you name it? Think it through. It's as important to know what you'll be recording as the area in which they could be categorized.
Let's say the area is in-office meeting notes. Will you record the applicable highlights from people's presentations and whiteboards? Will you make notes for follow-up actions? Are your notes about the people in the room and what they do? Be specific. Remember, these rules are designed to help you succeed.
Whatever it is you decide to record, you are making a promise to take digital notes about that thing. I recommend recording on the spot because you do not want to transcribe from paper later, as that's different from going paperless. In some cases, recording on the spot isn't feasible, so specify in your rules when you will create the record.
Rule No. 2: "When X happens, I will always make the digital note."
3. What tool will you use?
A huge point of failure when people try to go paperless is they don't decide on one tool. They try out different mobile apps, software programs, Web-based systems, and file-syncing services (see also "The Best File-Syncing Services"), and end up with notes about one subject spread out in too many places. That doesn't work. Pick one tool, and stick to it. It must be a tool that you like and that is effective for the job at hand. Remember that we have Rule No. 1 in place in order to make this system a trial. You'll try out the one tool, dedicate yourself to using it and none other, and then see if it works for this job. There are many tools that cannot be properly assessed until you've used them for a month at least.
In the video included with this article, I show three different tools that I use for different things, although that doesn't mean you should use the same tools. You should try out a tool that you feel comfortable using and that you think will solve the task at hand. If you're totally in the dark, you might start by browsing PCMag's Productivity software review section, or learning about different iPhone apps for note-taking or iPad apps for note-taking (many of those apps are also available for Android and other operating systems). Whatever the case, pick one and only one. P.S. It should not be your email inbox. If you have a notes app within your email system, fine. But your inbox is full of other things. You want your notes to be isolated and all in one place.
Rule No. 3: "I will only use tool Y for the notes."
4. What will you do with your notes? How will you act on them?
What is the purpose of your notes? If you don't know, there's no reason to be keeping them. Some notes serve as to-do lists. Other notes are meant for tracking purposes. Decide on the purpose of your notes, then ask yourself how you will act on them. You need a rule that dictates when and how you will refer to these notes you're keeping. Will you review them throughout the day? During meetings? While you're commuting on the bus or subway before or after school? If it's a to-do list, will you tick off the done items as they happen or at the end of a day or week? Define this time concretely; even if the answer is "throughout the day," does that mean every day or weekdays only?
Rule No. 4: "My notes will be referred to or acted on …" and fill in the blank with a time specification.
5. How will you correct slip-ups?
No one expects that you will follow your rules perfectly. Remember my earlier comparison of weight loss and organization? The trick to both is not following the rules absolutely, but following them enough. You have two sides of a ledger: rules followed and rules broken. You can break the rules sometimes, but you have to follow the rules more often. And when you break the rules too many times, you need a way to counteract the effects. In other words, you need a rule to correct your own slip-ups.
Let's say you're in a big meeting, ready to take notes, and realize you forgot your note-taking tool at home or on your desk. You grab a sheet of paper from someone's legal pad and get through the old fashioned way. Will you have time later to transcribe the notes to the paperless system? Or could that time be better spent acting on the notes? You might have to let it go. On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who easily falls off the wagon, it might be in your long-term best interest to stick to the paperless system and take the time to transfer the notes to the digital medium. In most cases, you'll deal with slip-ups on a case-by-case basis, but even then, you need to know what your options are. So take Rule No. 5 and define your options. You know yourself better than anyone else, so if it makes sense for you and your personality, you might also add in some parameters regarding when you'll make the correction.
Rule No. 5: "When I break a rule, my options for getting back on track are A, B, and C."
Advantages of Going Paperless
I'm a big fan of paperless notes, as long as the right tool is being used for job. The worst way to adopt a paperless note-taking system is to just blindly start using some app without considering the purpose. The best way is to think through what you intend to do and define some rules for when and how to do it. Paperless note tools have many advantages over a paper-based system, including search-ability, time and date stamping, calendaring abilities, archiving changes, collaboration and sharing options, and many more. There are plenty of reasons to go paperless with your notes, but when you do, set yourself up for a successful transition by setting some rules that are sensible for you and your way of working.
Get Organized is a weekly series of articles on PCMag.com to help you keep your digital files and online life organized. Check back every Monday for new tips and tricks.
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