Paperless - Episode #145 of CloudFocus Weekly

Machine transcript generated in 2026 from the episode audio (Whisper speech-to-text with automatic speaker separation). Speaker labels are automatic and may be wrong in places. Timestamps shown every few minutes.

00:10 Jason Atwood: This is the 145th episode of CloudFocus Weekly for the fourth week of July 2013. This episode is titled Paperless. Cloud.Folks week is sponsored by Arkus, you're Cloud Community experts. I am your host Jason Atwood and joining me and the least paperless or most paperless person on the planet. I know Justin Edelstein. Justin, how are you doing today? Which one is it? Least or more? I don't know. I was, I said least and then I thought, well, actually you're not bad and then I don't even know. So then I just. I reversed it. I'm good.

Justin Edelstein: You're good. You're good. I'm pretty paperless. Pretty paperless. I would say so. Pop your peas. You don't think so? I don't know. Well, we'll talk about it. So this episode,

Jason Atwood: Good sagué, this episode is all about... This is one of our... our third or fourth special episode. We did GTD. We did support. We did meetings. And now this is our fourth special episode, special episode, therefore all you League members, of going into like one topic. And this one came about, I don't know, I don't know how, I guess we did this at Arkus, we said at one point we were gonna go paperless. as much as we could and we've been trying to do it. And I've been trying to, oh I knew where it came about. It came about because I've been doing Paperless for a while. And I was gonna write a blog post next year called 10 Years of Paperless. And I decided to write it this year. And then this turned into a podcast.

Justin Edelstein: So here we are. and you'll have a blog and a podcast to listen to and read about on the same week.

Jason Atwood: Look how that's sketched out. It'll be next week, but whatever. Oh, next week. I guess I could post it. could post it. Yeah, well, no, I'll post it next week. So next week on blog.arcasync.com, there will be a... A podcast, a blog post called 10 years of Paperless, which is based on my experience. Sort of like I got, I didn't know if I was going to go too much into, too much into tips, too much into hints. So I kind of broke it down into like how I do it, what I do, best practices. And at the end I just listed out like gear.

Justin Edelstein: Everything you need to go Paperless and more.

Jason Atwood: So Everything you need and more. So this this episode we said we'd get into We get into Paperless and talk about it, talk about best practices and all sorts of other good stuff. Why, how to do it, the do's and the don't, and then we will talk about the gear, which you will find also on the blog post. So if there's anything you miss, I will link everything to its real thing next week. in the blog. And then, actually, one of them is my pick of the week. Oh, it's not. I got to change it. Yeah, change that. That's my change of the week. Change of the week.

Justin Edelstein: And then next week, when we come back, we'll talk about this week's blog post that'll be on the web, which is about sales activities and chatter.

Jason Atwood: We'll get back to the good old sales force. The good old, oh, it's going to see if we can do a whole podcast without saying.

Justin Edelstein: Without saying sales force? Salesforce. Without saying Google Wave? Google Wave! I don't know if we can do that. Alright, everybody drink.

03:10 Jason Atwood: So I don't know the format of this other than let's just get into it it was a little bit less thought out than the GTD one, which was more of an interview,

Justin Edelstein: Right? Well, you could interview me. I should have done that. I should have said oh you've been doing this for 10 years Let me interview you so so why don't we why don't we on the fly? I'll show it to you I don't have any questions, but you've read the blog post so I've given you read your blog post I have it open in In front of me, too We just start with the big the big picture. Why? Or what does it mean? Yeah, like why go paperless and when you're doing When you're when you're doing paperless, yeah, what are you doing? Right? What does that mean?

Jason Atwood: So before you that So I went back again, I thought I'd started in 2003. And so I went back to actually see when the first document that I scanned in and what it was dated. And actually it was a, I found an E statement from 2001. So my system is very simple. And again, so I'll end in the blog post, but. So I said, you know, I've basically been trying to go paperless paperless is like GTD in that there's no end you don't you aren't the GTD master or you're not you know you're not the paperless there is no absolute paperless society because we still get mail and still get certain paperless is a journey. And so I was saying I started in 2001 with a flatbed scanner where I started scanning, you know, basically pictures, because I like the concept of having pictures, and I had digital camera, and I was like, oh, I love this, you know, I'm taking pictures, and then I just started, I've just been doing it ever since and trying to go further and further along.

Jason Atwood: And even to this day, I still am doing stuff to try to go paperless. So to me, there's like three pieces to it. There, well, why go paperless? Why? Obviously there's the environmental impact, right? In that paper itself, it it It's actually made of stuff that burns like Paper, which is not good. It can't be in two places at once. It's hard to back up.

Justin Edelstein: You can't have your paper in your mobile device? It is hard to secure.

Jason Atwood: There is just, I mean, millions of reasons. I have had situations where people have said, oh, could you get me your, I don't know, what it was like, your con-ed bill from whatever, whatever time. And I'm like. four seconds on my phone, boom, con it, here we go, and I emailed them the con it bill, because I wanted to see it. I think maybe it's you, you wanted to ask about something. I'm like, oh yeah, three months ago it was, oh here's the setup. Because I have, it's all paperless, so it's all flowing and it's all in many places, and it's all backed up. We talked about this last week. So. That's a huge one. Productivity wise, it's just easier. It's easier to do things that are, you know, to keep it, you know, and it's easier to find.

06:24 Jason Atwood: I mean, to get your stuff. So for taxes this year, I was able just to put a folder and share that folder of all the documents that needed with my accountant. I used to print out, because my accountant didn't like to have paperless, I used to have to print out these big documents and give them to them and say, here you go. go, you know, here's the stuff and you go with them hand. But like, no, here's that here's a Dropbox shared folder of everything you need. Go for it. Never have to print paper.

Justin Edelstein: Taxes are a big area where paperless has come a long way in the last bunch of years. E filing you stuff to pay to E file. Yep. Now I think it's free. Right? Yeah. To pay to E file anymore. I I mean, papalaces. do the taxes and TurboTax. It was like, E-file for $25. I'm like, I think I'll mail it.

Jason Atwood: It's faster, it's easier. People send me documents to sign and I can sign them within minutes. Before you could even turn on a printer, I could have it signed and sent back. So there's all sorts of reasons. Really, for the Geek Society, it's about having and organizing stuff that you can then find again. If you live in a city, space is limited. So paper takes up space. And if you look at your cabinets and have folders of stuff, there's no good. So getting rid of all that also. And as the world has progressed, paperless has become more and more acceptable, meaning you used to not be able to... There used to be documents that you couldn't keep the paper, the digital copy of and be legal. But now, basically, all statements, all tax returns, everything can be kept digitally.

Jason Atwood: And that's okay. That's a valid format. You keep,

Justin Edelstein: In reading your blog post, I don't want to give the whole thing, but you keep so much more stuff than I do. It's unbelievable. Like all these statements, all these bills and everything, like I think e-delivery and e-statements are a huge... You know a huge thing for for being paperless right you go to your mailbox and for every bill or statement that you used to get. In in mail paper form you no longer get because they're coming to you via notification in your email box and you click on it and you land in your bill and then boom. I don't even, I mean, I just pay them and that's it. I don't download them. I don't keep them. I don't care to keep them. I'm pretty sure I can go back and get them if I really, really wanted to, but I just don't care.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, I'm shaking my head. No,

Jason Atwood: You can, but there's a time period. And so, well, you don't care, but there's certain things, things obviously tax wise or certain documents that you need to have. Yes,

Justin Edelstein: Tax stock. tax anything I know that has tax implications I do you said statements and then you said I don't t keep it yeah but those like those statements for like tax purposes at the end of the year you get your you know your tax bundle and you have it

Jason Atwood: But you don t have your month place and it doesn't always include every transaction. So here's what you should hear, how here's it, I'll start it up. What should we keep? What should we keep? Tell me. I mean, really what you need to have in the future. So I always like to think about this. What's my future self going to want? And I also look back over the past. What have I looked back in the past and needed? So. Any bill, any electronic bill, anything I keep, because I want to reference it in the in the in the future. I, I want to be able to go. What did I pay for that? What did I spend on that? How do I, you know, do I need a copy of that receipt in the future?

09:48 Jason Atwood: So. Oh, I had the guy come in and fix my GE thing. Well, I wanna go to my search and go GE repair and find the bill and find the plate. It's really, I'm thinking about my future self to say, is that guy in the future gonna wanna look at that document? And the other thing is the future guy sometimes is a tax auditor and that guy wants to look at everything. And so having more data actually is helpful because you can say, here's this, here is this. I'll tell you what I don't put in. This will be no ATM receipts. Well, first of all, I don't get ATM receipts. So ATM receipts you don't need to keep. Receipts that are sort of like billing, like I go out to dinner, whatever, it's good enough to have that in a, it actually shows up in your statement.

Jason Atwood: So if you went to, well, that's why I need to keep the statement. So if you went to Chuck E. Cheese and ordered a pizza and called it a business expense, We'll be right back. Well, you better have a - so someone comes back and says, well, where's your record that you paid for that at all? You can't say, I don't have one. So I have it twice because I have it - I write it in my Quicken, right? I have used it in software, and then I have it in my statement. I don't keep the actual physical receipt. Don't need it. It's in two places. So I don't keep that type of stuff. But statements, all tax documents, all e-bills, important letters. Also, I'll scan letters if someone, if I get a, I'll give you an example.

Jason Atwood: My daughter's, she gets back a report card, a very quarterly report. I scan it, throw it folder because in four years I might want to go back and look and go oh look I know she got this Or this, important letters from people, anything that's really bank or money related, let's just say I keep it because you keep a lot more stuff. But the value of keeping it, it's so much, it's so easy to keep. And as we're going to talk about and we're going to give you all the hints and stuff of how easy it is to do that. The pain of not having it is is so much greater than the tiny little value of keeping it the little tiny little bit of effort It takes to keep it and the systems now and the software and the scanning and the OCRing the OCRing is also good now That's like it's almost like you have to say why wouldn't I keep it so con ed bills You need them because someone's gonna ask for a con ed bill at some point in your life You read your statements for all your banking accounts you're going to need those.

Jason Atwood: Anything that you have any kind of tax related that you're gonna write off, you're going to need your finance accounts, your IRA might keep them for three. But if you just put in your system to always just download them and throw them in a folder, it doesn't matter how long they keep them, you got them. And that means you can get to them easier. So anyway, so the first thing I said in the blog post is really just try to get E everything. Get as E as you can. Turn on E statements. And what I do is two things. One is I obviously make sure I've got everything going e-delivery. The other thing about e-delivery is it's more secure. Like there's more mail, there's more fraud in regular mail than there is in email.

13:05 Jason Atwood: I can't tell you how often I get in my mailbox

Justin Edelstein: Somebody else's statement or something or the person who used to live in my apartment's statements. or and I'm like, now what do I just leave it there or give it to the doorman or like what am, I supposed to do with this and then who's gotten mine?

Jason Atwood: Well, you know, I also live in a you live in a wonderful, awesome apartment building. Yes. that has a lock-in key to your mailbox.

Justin Edelstein: Go to the suburbs. Where's their mail? In the mailbox.

Jason Atwood: Yeah, at the end of their driveway where anybody can roll up and grab whatever they want. Not even the suburbs. I mean... Well, everywhere. Everywhere else than the city where they put under lock and key. Right. So our stuff goes under lock and key and yes it can get mixed up. So, there's a security aspect to not having stuff. Then there's the... I like to know, I like to not have to waste my time and opening up a document and looking at it and paying it and whatever with it is more time than getting an email where I am anywhere. Give me an email because I could be on vacation. I could be in Guadalupe, poor. It doesn't matter. And if you've ever been in a situation where you're not, you're not home and you now have the ability to do all this stuff.

Jason Atwood: It's very powerful and you're like, you can make a transfer, you can do this, you can pay a bill. So part of it also going to E-statements is also then saying, pay them electronically because now you can schedule them in advance and you kind of, you can control it from afar or you don't have to be, you have to be waiting for that thing wherever you are.

Justin Edelstein: Right. So. That's why I like, you know, it's like very weird you think back to when, when you certainly started working and even when I started working, I'm a little younger than you. like the decision to get direct deposit or not. Right. Right. Like that. I remember my first job, I think I had direct deposit. My second job the did not. And it was like, Oh, here comes the guy walking around with the, with the envelopes. This is so great. I love getting my check, but then it's like. Oh, but then I have to go to the bank, I have to deposit my check, I have to wait a couple days for it to clear. I really wish I had direct deposit because I just already have the money.

Jason Atwood: And banks know that if you have direct deposit, it's the highest stickiness at a bank is direct deposit. Second is bill pay. So they know if they get you to do it. that they'll get you to stay, and so they'll give you stuff for it. They'll give you free this, free that, free that. So that's another way to bargain with them. It's just like using the debit card. Sometimes they'll give you a free account and use your debit card twice. So throw your debit card on like two automatically paying things and you're done. There you go. So. So here's what I did, just so, you know, again, I was gonna ask you another question. Go for next question, excuse me.

Justin Edelstein: Can you ask me another question? Excuse me, I'm in charge of this interview. All right, you got it. Cause I was thinking about it and I was like, you know, E statements and E delivery is like a huge thing. And I was gonna ask you and I'm hoping your answer is different than mine, but I'm pretty sure it'll be the same, like what your thoughts are like, what is the biggest? A number one biggest thing that allows you to go paperless.

16:15 Jason Atwood: I mean other than the internet?

Justin Edelstein: Other than the internet. What is like the big like the thing? If you didn't have this thing, It'd be very hard to be paperless like what would you say is like your your big big? You know there's lots of stuff right there scanners there shredders

Jason Atwood: So, what's, save things in, I think let's just get that out. PDF is a great standard, it's been around for a while, it's open enough that almost everything can read it. PDF is everything you store. But yeah, it's email.

Justin Edelstein: Like you don't need, you can't go. Email is the killer app for paper.

Jason Atwood: Absolutely, because every bank or every place that's sending you papers, anything, needs to have, because it's a law that if you send someone something, you have to. notified them that you sent them, right? You can't say, oh, there's an invoice waiting for you, and now I'm going to send collection, right, until I've, notify you. So they, there's a lot of, like, again, the laws have been changing, but it's now they have to notify you that you have a statement waiting for you. So there's, so now it used to be you had to send that by mail, and then it would bounce, the mail would bounce back and that's how they would know if you moved. Now it's email and they trust email enough, interesting enough, that. So yeah, email is the killer app. Email is the killer app.

Jason Atwood: Yeah Raffy. Like I,

Justin Edelstein: My parents as an example, they just went on a 22 day vacation all over Europe. And I imagine 10 to 15 years ago, I may have gotten a postcard or two in the mail. I got emails with pictures. I a to That's like one. I think about like how often people would have written letters and like in school having a pen pal like now you probably have an email pal. Well I'll give you a perfect I imagine you have an email pal I don't know I don't have a child of age to well of any age but to be in school I should ask one of my family members who are teachers who probably have pen pal like stuff but even even in school they do like you know the smart boards and like no more like flip pads those those big pieces of paper that you stick up on the wall it's all in a smart board and touch screens and Well, I'll give you an example.

Jason Atwood: My daughter is now at sleep way camp, but she cannot send... she cannot send email. She can't have any electronic device that connects to the internet. Right. Which is really cool. I think there's a nice, like, cutaway. But I can send emails to them that they then, I'm sorry, pay-post people, they then print and give it to her. The only other way is to send mail-mail, which takes seven days. It literally takes seven days to go from here to somewhere in Pennsylvania, New York to Pennsylvania, or it can take seven seconds and it can be there for her. Whatever so see they should go paperless and just you know

19:23 Justin Edelstein: Have an iPad or two that is used for just delivering those email messages to Yeah, even that's kind of it camp.

Jason Atwood: I don't know whatever So I'll see so first thing is to get everything you delivery and then this the second piece I guess is is really to stop the stuff that Isn't notification. So this is the junk right and I you know, this is I think with the people that most people need help with Yeah, everybody actually need some help, right? So I'm gonna I'm gonna help you and we want to ask me a question We've asked me the question. Okay,

Justin Edelstein: Cuz we've we've checked my mailbox together. We live in the same building So it's kind of sad. We we live in That I live there for there. You moved in last year. That's kind of sad. So sad. Yeah And we've checked our mailboxes together and I'm like, oh, another Lands end catalog or another, you know, furniture catalog. Because when I moved in, I got my furniture from, I don't know, I can't even remember the place. That's how well these things work. I can't even remember the place. But it's like, oh, they just send this every month. I get this stupid catalog. How do I get rid of this junk mail? Like there's some junk mail that to me isn't junk. Like I enjoy getting the Borgata like every couple weeks. Like a thing from the Borgata that says, oh, here's the things that you can get if you come down in the next couple of weeks.

Justin Edelstein: I like getting the stuff from the like, I'm like. I like getting this stuff from the POMS that says come out to Vegas, here's your free offer or whatever. Yeah, but those things are also, just an email. If you can go, if you want to get those things, go sign up on email.

Jason Atwood: I get them in email as well as mail. But anyway,

Justin Edelstein: How do I get rid of this stuff? So,

Jason Atwood: Well, just one thing about mail, first of all. Mail is dying you know they're talking about shutting down mail on weekends it is completely dying so hang on as long as you want or get ready for the future i just be prepared i'm sorry the mail is dying. You can go like, oh, if you have tons of time, if you have a little bit of time. So if you have tons of time, every one of those catalogs has a way to contact them to unsubscribe. And what I do is, is, and this is sort of my, so let me do my first step first. Why have the small amount of time? I don't have a lot of time. So I years ago signed up for, I think. two or three of these services. The ones that I like now is 41 pounds.

Jason Atwood: 41 pounds.org. Yeah, so this is one of my pick, or one of my things. 41 pounds.org is a organization that you pay because they actually do the work. And you give them your information and then they put you on as many do not. Do not mail mailing lists as possible. And there's two pieces of do not mail. Remember, there's do not mail and do not distribute to another person. So you can tell someone, this is what's tough, you can tell a company, don't mail me, and they'll say okay. But they can still give your information to the next company. Now of course you've said don't mail me, but then they can mail you. So you need to say do not mail and do not distribute. E-mails is as bad, but again- but again, the cost of sending an email and the cost of deleting an email doesn't mean I'm not taking down a tree to do so.

22:43 Jason Atwood: And putting it in a thing that then drives around in a truck or goes on a plane. I mean, if you think of the actual energy it takes to make that postcard from the book, gotta get to you. It's an unbelievable amount of energy. Now, you know, it's a percentage, but it's a lot when it could just come in an email. So anyway.

Justin Edelstein: So 41 pounds on org you sign up and they'll do that sign up just for families out there and and multiple people in one place. Are you paying them for the service of removing your address or you're removing your name with your address? You give them a bunch of different people in your family.

Jason Atwood: Anybody who lives there. Yes. And you And then you're telling them the catalogs you get. So then you go through and say, I get this, this, and this, and this. And then they send out notifications to them. But if they're like, they gotta have like, thousands and thousands of them in there. They have a big, they have a, so they put you on the email services or do not say mail services. Then they go specifically and go after one. So you say, I get this one, this one, this one, this one, go after them and stop them. So it sounds like the strategy is to almost, for a month,

Justin Edelstein: Save all the ones that you get, just so that you know that you get them. Yeah. So that you can go through at the end of the month and check them. I throw them in Evernote. So I throw a list in Evernote. I got this one. Yes.

Jason Atwood: Yes. And I then recycle it at home and then I then whatever. a So that's point one. If you use this service, you of whatever you can say to you. I'm going to sign up for 41 pounds. It's very, very good. And they say we'll get you between 80 and 95%. That's great. But I'm a super crazy person. I said super creep. You are a super super. So I have two. I do that and I did the belt and suspenders. So that's the first round. But I'vethood been doing that for years, so it's like anything that will get soon now is... Just keep going in. Well, if you have new ones, if you get a new one, you go in and you check it off. In theory, if you're still buying from places, then they will still start sending you things.

Jason Atwood: And so you'll kind of have new ones come. You can email them and you can whatever. They're actually pretty good. So then I do the second piece, which is if I'm still getting them- and the big ones. I mean the ones I'm usually getting now are the big catalogs. I then, I just go onto this search engine called the Google and I Google unsubscribe from, and I'm gonna use Lands End, Lands End catalog. We both use Lands End. Yeah. All right. Big offender. And then, or, I mean, the big ones are really, I'm trying to think of the list. I have a list of all the ones I... go after all the time. Then you'll then usually you'll find their website and then somewhere on the collection. a customer care email, sorry, so you go, we've added you to the do not whatever list.

Jason Atwood: And remember, say do not send me anything more and do not distribute my mailing address. You wanna put both of those in the request because without one, then you could be, they'll just send you to the next one. So I do that, right? So I do 41 pounds, then once that has sort of taken 80%, I'd say 75 to 80%, then I go for the other, you know. So I do that and now I've got a new tool which I guess I'll just get into my pick of the week because it's Get into the pick now. Go ahead. Right. So it's a new one called It's a new service I've been using called paper karma, so this is my pick of the week Okay, cuz I'm gonna make about 17 picks during this podcast It's and what you do is it's an app on the app exchange.

26:25 Jason Atwood: They've set it up on the app exchange I'm sorry on the Apple Store really Android AppExchange it's not AppExchange hmm, and you you take a picture You just take a picture of the of the mailing part that has the from and you to and you upload the picture and it says what address are they sending you to and then you put in an address you say Jason Atwood or or Apple my wife's name or sometimes it's resident so I have a bunch of addresses in there you hit go it uploads it then they OCR it so they know who it is and then they say we've contacted them to stop. to have them stop sending to you. So it's kind of like 41 pounds. But it's individual. So it's to get the 80 to 95%.

Jason Atwood: And this is all on the mobile device. Yeah. It's all on the mobile. And then you can check this. Oh, that's fantastic.

Justin Edelstein: I'd rather just do that than the 41 pounds.

Jason Atwood: 41 pounds is really going to try to, it's going to stop a lot more. So think of the 41 pounds as like. Thank you. The gorilla? The sieve. And then this is gonna stop and this is like a rain jacket on top. So you're right. You're gonna get more. I mean, you can try one or the other.

Justin Edelstein: I use both. What is, what is this cost?

Jason Atwood: I don't actually know. I'd have to search. Oh, you bought it once. It's not subscription. Oh, it's not subscription. It's just once.

Justin Edelstein: Buy it once. Either buy it once. You just take a picture of what? The little like coat like the. the sticker on the... So in my blog post I'll put a picture but I'm gonna actually now hand my phone.

Jason Atwood: Show it to me so I can explain it to people. All right so I'm you're seeing... I'm seeing you... and you... Well I'm not really seeing anything. Well just go into go into status whatever. A request status here we go.

Justin Edelstein: So and then go into one that's... Do you mind if I say what some of Sure. Here's the success Bloomingdale's. Yep. Sorry, Blumeys Oh, okay, you take a picture of like the the whole

Jason Atwood: Like the sticker that yeah put on top of the you they want you know If it's printed on you want them to you they say pictures of a place that of what they're sending it to you Right you and they are your well your wife's name your address And then it has Bloomingdale's on it, as well. right and they OCR it and then they contact when we don't tell them stop. Oh, wow.

Justin Edelstein: And then you could say if they got it right. Yes. It says it succeeded eight hours ago. Yes, and I guess you won't know until you don't get a Bloomingdale's thing. That's correct. Kind of weird, but well, this was nice.

Jason Atwood: But this is that's the thing about this is nice is then when you're standing in your mailbox and you get another the Booming Bales one, you can then go in and look. Is this one of the ones that I actually sent away to?

Justin Edelstein: I totally. Totally need to. get this app because I get a lot of the same crap that you're getting. Yeah.

Jason Atwood: All right. Makes sense because we live in the same building. I'm sure that they just target buildings. So now let's talk about getting all okay interviewer. What are you going to add?

Justin Edelstein: It's kind of funny that Victoria's Secret sends to the household and not to a specific person. Yes, it's very funny. I mean, I find that funny. Whatever. You know what I mean? It says Paper Karma. It's a great app. I've been trying it for about...

Jason Atwood: I don't know, two weeks now? I haven't seen any repeat offenders, but I'll let you know how it goes. I want to know if something that they said that they removed successfully gets through the cracks. Yeah. Maybe if it's a different return address or something like that. Most places will tell you that their catalog system, and if you're in marketing, you'll know this, catalogs are usually way in advance. So... Even if you unsubscribe something today, you're probably gonna get one or two more catalogs from them. So you kinda have to wait like three, four, six months to know. Doesn't mean you can. Can't track it. Doesn't mean you can't say, hey, listen, stop. But anyway, so that's the lower the amount of paper coming into your life.

29:57 Justin Edelstein: Now let's talk about the stuff that gets through. Let's bring this to the cloud. Okay. Can we bring this to the cloud? Because this is CloudFocus Weekly. Yeah. Focus weekly. So. So. Clearly there are things that still get through and that you need to get through in paper form right there there and There are ways to deal with those things. So How do you deal with something that does get through in a paper format that you know you want to keep? But you've got it now to piece of paper whether it came in an envelope or whatever, you've got this piece of paper and you need to process it and do something with it. So how do you do that? So I'll tell you, so here's my I call this scanning and shredding.

Jason Atwood: And there's two parts to it. And I'll explain what we have scanning and shredding. Right? Okay, so everything comes in into my life. That's paper goes into an in basket, right? Using GTD goes in basket, and then I go thread in basket whenever, or whatever once a week. The Dzank, and it's awesome. I actually have one here in the office. The idea is, they're document scanners. You can stack up as many as you want. They scan into your computer, and then they OCR it, which means Optical Character Recognition. So then they look across this document, they turn all that picture into words, and they push the words into the PDF, so they're all searchable. So if you went to Chuck E. Cheese... statement or on a place and you scan it in and then you search on Chuck E Cheese in one of your on your desktop, you'll find that document that PDF which is pretty cool.

Jason Atwood: So I scan them in. Right. I then name them. So that's that's it. I give it a name. Everybody has a theory about this. There's a million of them. Here's what I've been doing for 10 years. I've actually been modifying it in the last three years. But here's what I do now after 10 years of doing it. I give it a date first. It's the date of whenever the thing is. So if it's a statement, it's the statement date. If it's an invoice, it's the bill, is the invoice, is the date on the invoice. If it's a monthly invoice, it's the first day of the month of the invoice. So it's monthly, whatever. Most everything has a date. I just give it the date of when. It says it is. If I got it 10 days later, I'm not going to give it that date.

Jason Atwood: I give it the date that it says it is. Because when I need to reference it, they're going to say, we sent that on this date. They're going to reference it the document date. They're not going to reference it when you got it. So you want to put the date. So and I put that as year, year, year, dash month, month, dash day, day. Okay. Then I do the who and the what. and an identifier. So the who is, so it's chase, and for the chase statement, it's chase, right? Dash, what is this statement? It's a statement. So dash statement and then dash something. So invoices, I give it the invoice number. Statements, I give it the last four digits of my account number, because if I'm looking through a bunch of If I'm looking in this folder full of stuff, I want to say chase and then I know that I am looking at for this statement versus this statement.

33:18 Jason Atwood: So if it, because I might get four statements from chase one, that's a credit card one. That's a whatever. So I can go chase. Oh, it's the, you know, three, three, three, three account. Okay, let me open that one up. It's the June one. Interesting. Then, so I scan it with the IX500, it goes in, it opens up, I open it up right in preview, which is the Mac app, but you can use Adobe. I rename it, and then I save it into a folder. What folder do I save it into? Here comes the cloud stuff. Yeah, I went really simple on this. I just have a series of hierarchical folders. Some people say, well, why do you have folders? Why can't you tag? Why can't you do this? Again, the idea is really to make it easy.

Jason Atwood: If you tag and you do this and you do that, well then, it's just your buried entry is gonna be like, oh, I don't wanna do it anymore. So you want your buried entry to be very, very low, because then you get your data in there. So I use things like text expander to help me do the dates. So I can hit the things. I use. Things like Hazel to move documents around automatically for me. And then I throw them in folders in Dropbox. And so for finances, this is really easy. So for everything that's finances, and I have a picture of this in the thing, I literally just have a folder called finances on the top of my Dropbox. And then in there are... what 14 no 13 no 12 12 2001 12 folders 13 12 folders 2001 2002 and in there are just the are just the documents I don't go deeper I don't go this that I think because I found that even on my biggest year I have a couple hundred documents I don't need any bigger than that.

Jason Atwood: I don't need to get deeper than that. A couple hundred documents is enough to look through if I'm needing to find stuff. And since I date them, I can easily get to the date of when it is and it's like get to a certain month. It's very easy to find within those 20 documents, which one I'm looking for. And then search does the rest. And then Dropbox is nice because Dropbox then throws it everywhere. So then I can get to it on my desktop. I can get to it on my phone. I can get it on my my iPad and I can get to the web if I want to. So it goes up into the cloud and I'm good. To the cloud. So where else does it go?

Justin Edelstein: Because you've got people. A lot of people feel... we've sort of disbanded that myth, right? That paper is... I mean, it's flammable. So if your, you know, if your apartment is on fire, all your important documents that you've saved for 20 years are going to light on fire. That is true. But with that said, your computer could also be sitting on your desk and also light on fire. Now, sure, you have them in Dropbox, but Dropbox could also. have an accident and one day, you know, lose your documents. So what else? What else are we doing with our documents?

Jason Atwood: Yeah, so that's the one thing about going paperless is realize once it's paperless, while it's easier to destroy. And so you have to be more careful of it. So I like the backup theory that I don't know, someone said if it's not in three places, it doesn't exist. So if any document that you want, that you think is important, it better be in three places. Like if it's not Salesforce, it doesn't make sense. That's exactly right. Honestly, Dropbox is just one place. Right. So it's not two places. It's not two places. Because if you delete it in one, it's gone. So it's one place. If you have a problem and if Dropbox decides to delete something and deletes it downward, it can cascade. So it really is only in one place. Even if you have it on four computers, unless you want to go and unplug that computer from the internet.

36:55 Jason Atwood: Better get it off the internet real quick. and it will automatically delete. That's why it's one place. So I use Dropbox,

Justin Edelstein: Which is, we'll just call that your computer's file system. Yeah,

Jason Atwood: And it is. It's on my file system. And it's on the cloud, so you could, maybe it's one and a half places. Okay, one and a half. Then I use backup. I use Time Machine. At home, I've got a time capsule.

Justin Edelstein: Time Machine is Apple's built-in backup software that backs up on basically whenever you want it. Once an hour.

Jason Atwood: It's once an hour. It happens automatically. And this is any good backup system should be automatic. You should not have to think about it. You shouldn't have to do anything with it. You shouldn't have to say, time to back up. It should just happen because you won't do it otherwise. You might as well just have it happen. It's nice. It happens wirelessly. The new Mac, the new OS even does it when it's sleeping. So like even when a computer is sleeping it's in a power nap. It can still be backing up. It backs up automatically. And just because of this podcast I went back and tried to find something from a long time ago. And I can see if I can pull it back. Boy, was it easy. It was like go into time machines, scoot back in time, grab four documents, and say throw them right back on my desktop, and threw them right back in, all wirelessly to my time capsule, which is the Apple backup thing.

Jason Atwood: There are many different pieces of software that do this. Apple just happens to have a very good one. It's also a router, so that's nice. And I actually, and this is a little bit of, mine is not anywhere in sight in the house. So a little bit of security is that the time machine, and you can encrypt it, so if someone stole it, but you can't really find it. So my theory is you come in, you're rooting around my house, you're trying to steal all my stuff, you grab my Drobo, you grab my laptop and you run out the door, you have a hard time finding the time machine. The reason I want a local, local and not say, oh, why aren't you just backing up to something else as well? Because if you lose a computer and you need your computer back, you want to be able to be back up and running as fast as possible.

Jason Atwood: Calling up CrashPlan or Backblaze or any one of these places and saying, I need my data back. Fine. Wait for them to send you the disks. Because you don't have a computer for four days. I say no. I say, I want to go, I'm going to go Apple Store, credit card, bring home computer, plugin. restore from backup and I might have lost two hours worth of work. Maybe if I did two hours worth of data that somehow didn't get stored in the cloud, which for me is kind of crazy anyway. So that's one. And then belt. That makes two total places where the data is. And then belt and suspenders, I use third party backup software. So I use crash plan that also backs it up. So it's literally backing up everything. backs up everything offline.

Jason Atwood: Well, so that point you can say select folders at that point that point you can select folders because you can say hey listen Do I need to back up like for applications? I used to have to back up all my applications But now everything's in the app store and if I lose like if I need to reinstall Let's say tweet deck on my thing. I know I can go quick install install install install install and they'll just install same thing with music Same thing with music.

40:04 Justin Edelstein: I mean, it's, it's all just there I do match. There it is. So I don't know if I just matches like a, a free backup service for all your music.

Jason Atwood: So that is enough. If you do it that way, you're pretty much covering yourself enough. You have an offsite version, you have an onsite fast version, and then you have sort of the day to day. So I would say more Dropbox isn't really for backup. It's more for convenience. So while we're talking about the It kind of segues us into gear. Well, I mean, you talked about your, okay, one more thing. Well, because I didn't say it in... So there's one more thing. One more thing. What's your one more thing? Well, it's the other side of security of E.E. Anything that has my address on it or has, or my name or anybody in my family's name or anything that has a number or anything. Account, so this is the problem with paper is that someone can grab your, your data in your mailbox and whatever.

Jason Atwood: And then they have they have information that they can use to do identity theft or whatever. So anything that has any kind of number or any personal information, I shred. And I use a cross shredder which means it doesn't just make the strips as you saw in what was the movie. Oh Argo. Argo they were putting the strips together. Yeah you don't want that. You want the cross shredder it cross shreds across it. So, literally impossible to put back together. You want it to be easy. You want it to be fast and you want to be right next to where you are. So you just go boop, jit, jit. You don't want to even have to think about it. Our services and stuff that you can bring, like even our building, to have a shredding service downstairs.

Jason Atwood: Thank you. Yeah, I don't want that. I want it next to my desktop so I can go jit and hit it. And so I use the, I've had two scanners, or two shredders in the last eight years. I just bought this one. I guess I went a little bit upgraded my paperless this year. I use the Fellowes C-N, or 79Ci shredder.

Justin Edelstein: I also have a Fellow shreds shredder, but it's a crappy one. It's not a good one. It can only do six pages at a time. Yeah, this one has all sorts of features. It does auto,

Jason Atwood: It doesn't get jammed. It'll like stop and treat trying it. It and it says I'm too hot I'm not gonna shred it anymore. It does it literally says I'm done shredding. Yup, you Yep. So what else is essential? So ScanSnap, IX 500 is cross-platformed by Fujitsu. It's pretty much the best one on the market. There's a couple by some others. There's another maker, Neatworks has one. They have the pocket ones. I have that for a while. That one's not very good. I would say, at the point, just throw that paper into my briefcase and bring it home. I'm going to carry two ounces of paper or a pound of Yeah, it does. It's a scan is awesome. It's a little bit of a problem. It's an OCR software which is the most important piece.

43:33 Jason Atwood: That OCR is it while it scans and modern computers are very very fast. Like that happens almost instantly. Text Expander by Smile Software. I mean, for renaming files that is just unbelievably easy for moving stuff. I use Text Expander way too much. I mean, there's no use. that you can't use it. Then for storage, so I use a couple. I'm going to talk about why one of them I don't use for certain things. So obviously home I use Dropbox. We use Google Drive at work, which is the same thing, right? You drop things into a folder system, they sync up. Google OCR is it for you, which is nice. And then it's available online and it syncs other places. Same system. documented in my life, right? That's not that's just notes collection of anything. But people say, well, why don't you use it for your PDFs?

Jason Atwood: And I've had this question. So why don't you use so why use a service like why use folders to collect things? And why not use something like Evernote to in underdog software out there that'll say, we'll just take all your stuff and kind of like iTunes, make it, you don't have to worry about where things are. And I think the theory is that with all this software and stuff, it's still easier to put things into folders than it is to put them into just an app. At the end of the day, I need to know that that my 12 years of history can be pulled out in a second and in Dropbox, I can literally go select that folder, that folder, go right click archive, and then throw it on the desktop or the USB drive and walk out the door.

Jason Atwood: And that's it. There's no, oh, I got this. Let me go export. and Not crazy. Sometimes it doesn't seem to always be running, and I don't know. I'm not 100% sure about it. I don't feel giddy at the fact that it's job. Paper Karma I just talked about, which is my pick of the week. Great app. You really got to test something for six months a great book by another person who's done Paperless and does podcasts and does, if you want to go deep into his stuff, actually Paperless by David Sparks. He wrote a book on it. It's a very quick read, but what's nice is it's the ebook version that's on- Ibooks. Maybe he has the Kindle version. I don't know if Kindle supports inline videos. I don't think it does. H But the iBook version, literally you read two pages and then he shows you what he does.

47:51 Jason Atwood: And he shows you how he renames. And he shows you how he uses his text expander. And he shows you how he uses Hazel. And you'll see a lot of the same stuff we're doing. And he gives you the reasons why to use PDF and why he uses this. And he has a law firm and he does it all in his law firm as well. He's really good. His naming convention is a little bit different than mine. Mine's a little more structured. He's a little bit less structured. He'll definitely put more, he captures a lot more stuff like letters. I don't capture a lot of letters. I don't care about letters. But really great read. Paperless by David Sparks. It's a book. It's a book. Well, it's a book. It has lots of videos in it.

Jason Atwood: I like books with videos.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah. So that's all. You can't do that in a real book. That's a paper book. Look. That's all the stuff. Thanks for going paperless with me. And just to look at this, this is very paperless. I would say so, too. We don't have a a lot of paper. Actually, I don't think we have much of any paper. But I'm looking around. I mean, we have a couple of white papers that we've written that we've printed for collateral for Dreamforce, because when you get a booth at Dreamforce, they give you that. That paper stanchion. I think we will not take that this year. Yeah, I'll just say we don't want that It was something else. It's a video board I think they won't we have a couple other like more Like again mostly for dream force like we have these printed like cards and stuff But aside from that we don't do a whole lot with paper.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, and we get paper we scan a shred

Jason Atwood: Yeah, I mean here's here's the here's how we know we're a pretty paperless company We moved in June 1st. We haven't connected the printer yet. Or no, we have connected the printer. No relent. It's not even connected.

Justin Edelstein: The printer is not connected.

Jason Atwood: So there you go. We're a little the end of July and we haven't connected. Two months we have not printed anything. Would that right. Or if we have, we've done it from home or I think we printed a couple of things like we printed the name plates or something we did to the. But if a pre-done sainter on that, that alone will save half the paper in the world because you never have to print everything ever again to sign it. You just go to it.

Justin Edelstein: I signed my taxes that way. Me too. Me too. It's your sainter.

Jason Atwood: Here's the pro tip. If you sign the document for a lot of other people, like you sign for your wife, you get their sainter, get them to give you your sainter, put it into your system, and then you can sign for them. I'm not, you know, it's a trust level, but Man, that's easier. You just you get a document. Hey, can you sign this? I mean, I must sign four or five things a week and they're like, how did you get that back to me so fast? I'm like because I just opened up preview I hit the same thing and I put in the date and I saved it and I sent it back to you Right and I gave it the and I gave that the date that I signed it. How's that? So there's my there's my my my naming convention thing Great.

50:51 Jason Atwood: All right, we done. That's it. Are we paperless? We're paperless. Well, I hope this helped again. This is something that's been kicking around. The blog will be up. You want to follow us? Follow Justin at it. You're not going to let me make a pic? Oh, sorry. I don't need to. It's all good. I mean, we made like 17 pics. We made a lot of pics. I can wait till next week. And this isn't a paperless pic. It's not a paperless pic, so we can wait till next week. Oh, tell me, tell me three things that you use that are sort of helping with paperless.

Justin Edelstein: Scanner okay, so yeah, it's like kind of like a new thing. I've always had a scanner right, but it was a Not a good one it's right. It's a printer scanner fax machine thing So it's very much a flatbed the ones that feed and you can feed multiple pages in to Allow for me to like take things scan them and then get rid of them right as opposed to Like in the past, it's like, oh, I'll just keep this. So I don't have a whole lot of stuff. Like I looked back and like documents and I'm like, oh I have all my tax stuff since 2011 or since 2007 Electronic that's cool You know all the All the stuff that I need for, and tax has really been like a big sort of driver for me.

Justin Edelstein: Like, oh, I need to really keep this stuff. And it's a lot easier to keep it in a folder on a a computer than it is somewhere else. Cause then when I want to just give it to somebody that. do what they need to do. Here it is. Right. Again, email. I mean, you can't really be paperless without email because it's the main notifier. And I really do think the smartphone has been a big, you know, a big piece of it, right? Because you can carry around. thousands of documents with you in your pocket. You don't need to pack up the deck when you're going on a sales call. Let me print out the deck and pack it up so everyone has a printout of what I'm about to talk about or whatever. You can have it on your phone and you can project it.

Justin Edelstein: And even, I guess to that point, modern conference rooms, talking in a business context. You mean like behind me? Well, yeah, I mean they they're conference rooms Five six years ago. We're not equipped with Flat screen TVs that you can just plug something into your computer and boom you're on the flat screen So people would literally print out Packets like 20 30 40 page packets for like a status report One meeting, they sit there for an hour and have 300 pieces of paper that then get tossed in the trash afterwards. Modern day- Hopefully recycled, but whatever. Well, when I say trash, I mean like recycled bin. But the modern day conference room, when you walk in, it's got a flat screen TV. If not, it's got a projector mounted to the ceiling or something that you can just plug an HDMI or a...

53:53 Justin Edelstein: DVI or a VGA or whatever into your computer and boom it's on the screen and You don't have to print out the 15 page Deck or Excel document or whatever it is contracts all that stuff

Jason Atwood: Stuff just even I think pop I was a web of conferencing to like the amount that we do and go to and WebEx by like go to down today WebEx Not not sure it was down. Yeah, just wasn't working very well on my computer.

Justin Edelstein: My computer had some issues today, so I'm not gonna totally blame it on it. I am, because it's more fun. Oh, okay.

Jason Atwood: I will say that even that, like when I share stuff, when I share a document, when I share a, you know, everything I do doesn't, it never needs to the go to a piece of paper. And primarily because everything we do is sort of over the web and it's online and there's a picture and there's a PDF and there's a document you send. And so... and you show someone something, so you don't really need to build it into a piece of, you know, to print it to something that you actually need, because you don't need it, because you would have to send that to somebody. So, I mean, again, it's so rare. And I have a big honking printer at home that, I mean, I didn't have a printer for like 10, I haven't been a long, long time, but I actually did something in business that I needed to have a good, good printer.

Jason Atwood: So I bought a really nice printer and it's, of course, lasted forever. It rarely gets used. But yeah, that stuff has really just changed the way we work. I mean, I think back when we worked at that big company. And just the amount of stuff we would do.

Justin Edelstein: Just the amount of paper. Someone would be responsible for printing in color.

Jason Atwood: Oh, that was the worst. Well, that's a funny story, so a side story, and then we'll wrap up here. When we worked at that big company, right, it actually had been just bought, or I think when you were there, it had just been bought or merged with another much, much bigger company. It was already done before I started. Yeah, which actually your dad used to work for it, so that's kind of funny. Right, yeah. Well, our culture always was, we used to look at the bigger company that bought us, we were the smaller company, and again, small, I mean massive, but bought by Godzilla, and we used to be like, oh, those. I remember Right? Like the dot matrix, and they would get them like stacked up like in them on a Monday morning someone stacked them and they were all the I think they were like all the trade receipts or trade something and they'd have to I guess the idea was that they would go through them but they were they were just so you see them sort of to stack up out someone side outside their their.

57:08 Jason Atwood: Their office you'd be like what are those like oh those are those those are the official trade whatever that you know we get printed out and sent to us every week you'd like really you really and you're really doing something with that I mean I your your your intern sitting on top of them like that's his place to sit it keeps the door open it keeps the door open Oh, this is a stack. And then everywhere in our office, and this is that big company, like if it, there was only two things that were in the office. It was either a cube or it was filing cabinets. And that was it. And your two pieces of property that you got to have when you walked in was like, here's your cube or your office. And then here's your stack of filing cabinets that you get to keep.

Jason Atwood: And I remember when people would leave, they'd be like, you know, oh, you know, you and I left. you know, here's my four cabinets and I had been pretty good. and all the stuff that I did that was labeling and hearing. And I just remember thinking, no one will ever go through any of that ever. It just will just someone moves and then they will just go through and all that stuff from Jason. Let's just trash it. Let's just read that. Totally. Send it to paper to whatever recycling system. And they just have those stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of those. That was it. I remember all up and down the hallway. It's nothing but filing cabinets for all this paper that no one ever cared about ever ever again. Anyway. Anyway. That's it.

Jason Atwood: That's it. All right. Follow us at JustElstein. Follow us at JasonMamowood. Follow us at ArcaSync. Go to Facebook.com slash ArcaSync. Remember in the Dreamforce Portal group and we're in the Success Community Group, there's actually a good group in Success Community Group called Evernoot Is My New Brain. or Evernote is my brain, so he's kind of a paperless guy. The guy who runs it, I forgot his name right at the moment. Jeff Gross. There you go, Jeff. So go in there and post in there. I'll probably forward this podcast into that or repost or whatever it is. Re-chatter. I will, that's what I'll do. I'll share it in there because we talked about Evernote, so it's relevant. We're on LinkedIn, we're on Google+, you can subscribe to iTunes, leave notes in the discuss at the end of the podcast episode up on blog.arcasync.com if you're seeing it there or you can go there and then at the end of the, click into the podcast and there's discuss at the end.

Jason Atwood: You can, if you leave something, we will almost definitely respond. because we get notifications about it. Until next. We'll be back with a normal episode and a few less picks. Until then, enjoy those cloudy days.

1:00:19 Justin Edelstein: Thanks for watching!