We’ve blogged a lot about our retreat garage sale and the initiatives that have come to life as a result of it. I am happy to be a part of the Paperless Office team, along with Melissa and Barb.
While it seemed like a no-brainer at the time, (don’t print stuff!) I think it is going to prove to be a little more challenging than that. There are forms, agreements, receipts, etc…where to start?? We got carried away (in a good way) in our first meeting, and moved straight from how to reduce paper to starting a garden and composting. While that is great, we need tips on how to make this thing real!
My research so far seems to point to scanning things, freeing up some server space to hold what once was in file cabinets, and backing everything up like a fiend. Oh! And it mostly says you need some sort of IT genius to make it all work. We are trying to keep our IT geniuses busy with creating awesome booking engines and websites, so I’m looking for the things us laypeople could conquer.
I also found this gem of a list of things to do first, courtesy of Geertjan’s Blog:
- Don’t move your stuff. When you move to a different office (as we have just done), grab the opportunity to not move all your stuff with you. Destroy it all. (Or cheat and take it home, creating a paperless office at the cost of a chaotic home environment.)
- Don’t connect to the printer. Once you are in your fresh, new, pristine office: Don’t set up a connection to the printer! If you can’t print, you won’t generate paper, will you?
- Be ever watchful. Whenever you find yourself with something in your hand, ask yourself if you need it to be there and whether you can avoid taking it to your desk. If you can’t avoid taking it to your desk (from which it will become increasingly difficult to remove, because the longer it is there, the greater the significance it will attain), put it in your bag, instead of on your desk. Okay, that’s cheating, but you’re more likely to empty your bag than clean your desk. Or maybe that’s just me. (When placed on a solid surface, the weight of an object increases in proportion to the length of time it isn’t moved. Based on empirical research, I have found this axiom to be unfailingly true.)
- Blog about your intention to maintain a paperless office. Once you’ve blogged about it, you can’t go back. You’ve reached the point of no return. Paperless is what you said and paperless is what it will have to be for ever after. Chances are that you will get mocked by colleagues as soon as paper starts collecting on your desk, which is further incentive for maintaining paperlessness.
So, at least we’ve got number 4 covered!
Does anyone out there work in a paperless office? How did you get started?
-Ashley