How Many of you are Paperless?

[paul999]

In an age where computers are the center of our universe I've been surprised at how I still need paper to feel like I can find a document........that is until the last few years. I have so much paper! My business tax summary is 80 pages double sided! My papers for one years worth of business taxes fills 2 file boxes and take 80 hours to process just to get to my accountant! This is nothing compared to most corporations but my little empire of multiple businesses,properties etc. generates a butt load of paper. But then.....I worked along side municiple government to Chair our town festival. It generated 4 file boxes of freakin' paper!

I've been researching going completely paperless and ever since my ipad purchase I've started to see it is possible. After a ton of reasearch I bought a fujitsu scansnap, an account with shoeboxed.com and a dedicated imac to run my whole document system. I based my system on the ebook Paperless by David Sparks.

What a relief! I can now find anything. I have, over the years, developed an in depth system for the recording studio so using some of my familiar systems really helps a lot. I still have a quite a way to go to be totally paperless but I will make steady progress and should be almost totally free of papper by this time next year.

Who else here is attempting to be paperless? How are you doing it?

[Emma]

On a slight side-note... I have noticed how much harder it seems to actually 'write' something now... like a letter, a card, whatever... my hand sort of stumbles at first whereas it used to be automatic...

[fHumble fHingaz]

I've been researching going completely paperless and ever since my ipad purchase I've started to see it is possible.

...I don't know about that - you still need paper for some things...unless, of course...er.... is there a toilet paper app yet?

[garageband]

my ipad purchase I've started to see it is possible. After a ton of reasearch I bought a fujitsu scansnap, an account with shoeboxed.com and a dedicated imac to run my whole document system. I based my system on the ebook Paperless by David Sparks.

I can literally buy a mountain of copy paper and a drawer full of black ink for what you spent in your drive to go "paperless". Sounds like a rich guy feel-good paradigm I can't really relate to.

The promise of the paperless office seems about 20 years old, in my head. I haven't seen any substantial movement in that direction in the interim. Frankly, I'm glad. I spend enough hours a day focused on a computer display. I feels different to look at a piece of paper and scribble on it if necessary, which seems like using a different part of the brain than inserting text into a document via an electronic device.

[shackman]

Paperless. Interesting.

So Paul: when you're in the studio, working on a difficult mix and you need to remember to go back and fix that compression bump at 1.23, or clip out that sibilance at 2.36, what do you do.

Cos believe me, if you are still young enough to be able to remember those two little "to dos" now, there'll come a day when you can't.

It'll be ok though: Just go to the PC desk top, (1 action); open Notebook,(3 actions on Windows, unless you have a shortcut to it on your desktop); make a note,(1 action); name the file and save it to the desk top. (3 actions);

Then, when you next pass through the desktop, you'll see the note and read it to see what it says. And then you'll fix those little problems.

Call me a Luddite! I write it on the PAPER notepad beside my keyboard and that's that. (1 action)

I'm with GB. Paperless started when I was working on National NewsPAPERS (Ironic) way back twenty-five years ago.

It ain't here yet and it ain't coming soon!

[paul999]

I can literally buy a mountain of copy paper and a drawer full of black ink for what you spent in your drive to go "paperless". Sounds like a rich guy feel-good paradigm I can't really relate to.

The promise of the paperless office seems about 20 years old, in my head. I haven't seen any substantial movement in that direction in the interim. Frankly, I'm glad. I spend enough hours a day focused on a computer display. I feels different to look at a piece of paper and scribble on it if necessary, which seems like using a different part of the brain than inserting text into a document via an electronic device.

This is exactly how I was was feeling until recently. Paperless systems felt like people talking about their gas electric cars as if they are better then everyone else for driving them.

In a dollars and cents/sense way I need to factor in labor as well. I had a full time personal and administrative assistant for 5 years because my business needed it. A year and a half ago I decided, for various reasons including the fact that I had lost touch with certain portions of my business because I was not seeing certain administrative sides of it, to have only part time administrative help. Now with part time help I and am doing the parts of the administration I need to to stay in touch with my businesses. My paperless system cost about $1000 plus a monthly fee of $30 or $50 (undetermined yet). Compare that to the fact that good administrative help is $680/week. The cost of paper and ink don't even factor in.

I do find it much quicker to write chord charts, sheet music, tab etc on paper. If I am in a high pressure situation I still use paper but then take a photo of it on my iphone or scan it and store it in my archive. I give the paper to the client or recycle.

The 20 year old mythic idea of a paperless office has been born. I believe it is now an unstoppable force that will gain serious traction in the next boom cycle of the economy. It is expensive but as is the case for me a cheap alternative to labor cost. The game changers are things like fast reliable scanners, OCR reading software, icloud and dropbox to automatically sync everything. Mix that in with an iphone, ipad and imac and boom your in business.

[paul999]

Paperless. Interesting.

So Paul: when you're in the studio, working on a difficult mix and you need to remember to go back and fix that compression bump at 1.23, or clip out that sibilance at 2.36, what do you do.

Cos believe me, if you are still young enough to be able to remember those two little "to dos" now, there'll come a day when you can't.

It'll be ok though: Just go to the PC desk top, (1 action); open Notebook,(3 actions on Windows, unless you have a shortcut to it on your desktop); make a note,(1 action); name the file and save it to the desk top. (3 actions);

Then, when you next pass through the desktop, you'll see the note and read it to see what it says. And then you'll fix those little problems.

Call me a Luddite! I write it on the PAPER notepad beside my keyboard and that's that. (1 action)

I'm with GB. Paperless started when I was working on National NewsPAPERS (Ironic) way back twenty-five years ago.

It ain't here yet and it ain't coming soon!

This is one thing I LOVE about my ipad. It is a note book. I use the note pad app as a scribbler and keep it beside my keyboard just as you keep your paper there. I use a scribble app for hand writing for those times that you need to "draw driving instructions" or the like. If the person needs the notes I can email it to them or print via wifi printer........or ....... draw it on paper like I should have in the first place:-)

[the evil]

Paperless is awesome, i cant imagine going back to a paper world... However make sure you have a good backup system or online backup because once its gone its gone...

[paul999]

Paperless is awesome, i cant imagine going back to a paper world... However make sure you have a good backup system or online backup because once its gone its gone...

Totally. I use dropbox, icloud and time machine.

[richiebee]

I've used my Xoom for scribbling stage plots (photos with scribbled) overlays and it was incredibly useful and streamlined. But I've stopped taking it to most meetings because scribbled notes are like they are on paper - impossible to read, and my typing is not fast enough to keep up with the conversation. In meetings where I don't need to write much, it is quite useful.

I won't be going paperless in my home business but I do everything electronically where I can. I don't think my tablet is any use in this regard. Apps like Office to Go suck compared to MS Office. I just use my old studio machine for admin tasks (a 2006 HP machine that's still running very nicely).

[garww]

Just this morning, I'm shopping for ink and 3-hole punches. I'm pretty much a binder and file cab freak. The one time I had a fire, the paper binders faired much better than the electronic stuff. I may go with ribbon ink.

EDIT: I've always wanted a pocket recorder, but I guess I never have any brilliant ideas : (

[bozmillar]

I avoid paper whenever possible, but there are some things that are just a pain to do on a tablet or phone. For me, tablets are great for consuming information, but terrible for creating information. I hate hate hate having to use the touch keyboard for anything unless I absolutely have to. I've even gone back to using a pad of paper and pen for my todo list I carry around.

At work, I have to have a notebook or something for not taking. Scribbling out diagrams, working out equations etc just doesn't work on a tablet.

[shackman]

Paul999 brutal edit-

OH Crap!

Shackman- I deleted your post entirely by accident. I hit the edit post thinking I was replying to you. My deepest apologies. I can't find a way to get your post back either. DOH!

Sorry Bud.

Paul

[garww]

I'm only paperless in the bathroom and kitchen

[paul999]

SHackman-This was my response to what you wrote. Sorry again.

Paul, I wasn't gonna say this but I agree with GB

Sounds like a rich guy feel-good paradigm I can't really relate to.

MANY of us just can't afford the IPAD.

I think my response to GB adressed a lot of this. *When you say "Many of us just can't afford the ipad" I think it misses the mark a little bit. *The ipad just does not hold the value to most people that it would need to in order for most folks to spend $500 on one. *Even poor folks end up with laptops, tv's, BBQ's, cell phones etc. *The ipad came out 3 or 4 years ago if I remember correctly. *I could have purchased one but it didn't hold the value for me then. *If something holds value and turns into a "need" in your brain people find a way to get one even if their dirt poor and can't afford it. *I had a tenent in on of my properties that was dirt poor and some had 2 cell phones, computers and a plasma T.V. *They couldn't afford medical bills but they had a satellite T.V. subsription. *I can afford satellite T.V. but have never owned it because it seems so expesive for what you get. *

I'll stop before I start ranting...... Hey wait I already have

[garageband]

*They couldn't afford medical bills but they had a satellite T.V. subsription.

Right. Medical bills are thousands of dollars. Cable is thirty bucks a month. Eschewing the later would make literally no difference concerning the former. Even a rich guy like you can see how this makes sense. I always like it when well-off people second-guess how poor folks spend their money.

[paul999]

Right. Medical bills are thousands of dollars. Cable is thirty bucks a month. Eschewing the later would make literally no difference concerning the former. Even a rich guy like you can see how this makes sense. I always like it when well-off people second-guess how poor folks spend their money.

I should clarify. In Canada with "free Health care" I mean medical bills like dental cleaning ($275), Alberta health care premiums ($44 per month per person). Some prescriptions can get pretty expensive but I am more or less talking apples to apples here cost wise. There are no $250,000 privately paid for heart surgeries here.

[garageband]

There are no $250,000 privately paid for heart surgeries here.

Yeah, you definitely hit on a sore spot of mine with that one. I've got a medical bill from when when one of my boys crashed his bike and landed on his helmet. Got a concussion, an 20 mile ambulance ride and was as at the hospital a half day for some tests to determine he was fine. Ten grand. $450 for one doctor who actually saw my son for less than five minutes. It's just Monopoly money to them: made up numbers. Insult to injury, they said if I cut them a check with a couple of weeks, it'd be 60% of that. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to let those thieving fuckers dictate that my family can't watch TV or really anything else to do with our lives.

[paul999]

Yeah, you definitely hit on a sore spot of mine with that one. I've got a medical bill from when when one of my boys crashed his bike and landed on his helmet. Got a concussion, an 20 mile ambulance ride and was as at the hospital a half day for some tests to determine he was fine. Ten grand. $450 for one doctor who actually saw my son for less than five minutes. It's just Monopoly money to them: made up numbers. Insult to injury, they said if I cut them a check with a couple of weeks, it'd be 60% of that. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to let those thieving fuckers dictate that my family can't watch TV or really anything else to do with our lives.

That is brutal. 40% interest in 2 weeks. I bet you could make a good case for unjust enrichment. That is as much as a bookie charges and in most places is illegal

[garageband]

I bet you could make a good case for unjust enrichment. That is as much as a bookie charges and in most places is illegal

I'm not sure if you are acquainted with who controls the lever of power in this country... Even during the period of recession (shrinking GDP), guess who was still building palatial hospital campuses at a steady rate. Not to mention their transformation of putative health care system reform into a windfall via "now everyone MUST buy our product" legislation.

[JoshERTW]

I'm not sure if you are acquainted with who controls the lever of power in this country... Even during the period of recession (shrinking GDP), guess who was still building palatial hospital campuses at a steady rate. Not to mention their transformation of putative health care system reform into a windfall via "now everyone MUST buy our product" legislation.

The American medical system is ridiculous.

The Conservative gov't up here secretly wants to privatize health-care but they'd have a revolution on their hands so they are going about it very carefully and quietly.

I'm a broke dude living in an affluent riding and my own member of parliament is a former doctor - I didn't vote for her, and I have no idea how long she actually practiced medicine but it can't have been that long as before starting her political career she taught for some time at an elite school of economics in London (the Ivy School of Business) - the course she taught was in "Monetization of Health Care," or basically, how to lobby the gov't to slowly mutate our health care system into something which will allow private industry to take it over and rob us all blind.

Strangely this never came up in any of her campaign speeches, not sure why she wouldn't have proudly proclaimed her prestigious former career. I had to dig to find that nugget. Another fun fact was that she was clearly transplanted here for an easy win by the head office, she's from Alberta and moved here about a month before the election.

Keep an eye out for it Paul (and other Canadians on here)

Now that I've thoroughly taken the bait to go off topic... Other than a logbook I keep on my desk for tracking/mixing notes/scribbles, I do all my invoicing and such via PDF and email and I accept cash or pay-pal for payment.

[garageband]

the course she taught was in "Monetization of Health Care,"

OK, that makes me want to vomit.

I'd like to be more paperless. For me, it's more a question of designing systems I will use and procedures I will actually follow.

[garww]

Yeah, you definitely hit on a sore spot of mine with that one. I've got a medical bill from when when one of my boys crashed his bike and landed on his helmet. Got a concussion, an 20 mile ambulance ride and was as at the hospital a half day for some tests to determine he was fine. Ten grand. $450 for one doctor who actually saw my son for less than five minutes. It's just Monopoly money to them: made up numbers. Insult to injury, they said if I cut them a check with a couple of weeks, it'd be 60% of that. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to let those thieving fuckers dictate that my family can't watch TV or really anything else to do with our lives.

Can you raise you right leg a little more ? I think I can get another inch up your *** if you just help me out here. If that sounds a bit obscene, that's only a scratch on the surface of the racket.

I guess this is actually a good case for the power of paper.

[garww]

Not all Doctors are racketeers. One with a decent campaign in the US is Ron Paul. I'm sure he remembers making house calls.

[JoshERTW]

My Dad and Aunt are both doctors and are certainly not in it just for the money. My family never went on lavish vacations or anything when I was a kid.

Most family Doc's I've encountered in this country really are in the profession to help people. The ones who aren't move south or enter politics I guess.

I'd vote for Ron Paul any day of the week.