How to Go Paperless: 5 Simple Steps

Going paperless doesn't have to be hard, especially if you have the right tools to do it. If you're trying to give up paper entirely, there are five apps or services that can help you make the change simply, effectively, and permanently.

First, take stock. Where in your life do you still use paper? Maybe you keep your to-do list in a notebook or perhaps you have a stack of documents that you signed in ink and now have nowhere to go. Rather than feel overwhelmed by the idea that you should abolish all paper from your life, think smaller by identifying the key areas where paper is still prolific so you can focus on those places first.

Once you have an idea of what you're dealing with, you'll need these five tools:

1. a to-do list app,

2. a scanning app,

3. an e-signature tool,

4. a cloud storage and file sharing service, and

5. a note-taking app.

Let's look closer at each one of these tools and what they do. Below you'll find recommendations for specific apps to help you get started.

1. A To-Do List App

If you're trying to go paperless, you must find a to-do list app that works for you and stick with it for a few weeks.

The best to-do list apps are so much more efficient than paper lists. With an app, you never have any of your writing crossed out and scribbled over. You can easily edit and rearrange tasks when priorities or deadlines change. You can assign tasks to other people, get reminders of upcoming due dates, add links and one-touch-dial phone numbers to your tasks, and so forth. 

My top two picks among to-do list apps are Todoist Premium and Asana. A few other apps are very good for specific types of people. They include OmniFocus (for Apple users who follow the Getting Things Done methodology), TickTick (for users of the Pomodoro Technique), and Workflowy (for those who like an extraordinarily simple and pared-down app experience).

Once you pick a to-do list app, start by creating three categories of lists: Work, Personal, and Household. You can change them later if they aren't quite right for your needs. 

In the Work section, write down tasks you must complete this week for your job. Then stop. Don't get too ambitious or think too far ahead just yet. In your Personal list, write down a few personal to-dos—whatever comes to mind, such as sending a thank-you card or scheduling a haircut. Use your Household section for starting a grocery shopping list and writing down other tasks that come to mind, regardless of how soon you need to do them. You might also create a list called Someday for the miscellaneous stuff.

That's plenty to get started. As you use your to-do app, you'll figure out what strategies work best when it comes to organizing lists, setting up reminders, and assigning tasks to other people.

For the first couple of weeks, keep your lists short and straightforward. Using a to-do list app for the first time is like adopting any other new habit; if it's too complicated, you might not stick with it. Once you have the habit down, you can start refining your to-do list strategies.

2. A Scanning App

A scanning app is invaluable for turning important paper documents into digital files. When you digitize documents, you can either file away the originals, in the case of important documents, or shred or recycle them. 

Examples of papers you might digitize are tax filings, identification documents, certificates (birth, death, marriage, diploma), warranties and receipts, recipes, and even non-paper documents, such as the details and instructions printed on the underside of your router.

Mobile scanning apps, which are what I prefer to use, turn your phone's camera into a scanner. While you can use any printer with a scanner to digitize documents, mobile scanning apps are more convenient and portable. You can snap a picture of anything anywhere.

The best scanning apps detect not only the edges of the item you're scanning but also what kind of item it is, whether a page from a book or a business card. A good scanning app should also be able to compile multiple pages into a single file. Top-of-the-line scanning apps also include optical character recognition (OCR) technology so that within a minute or so of scanning a document, you can copy and paste the text from it. 

Two scanning apps that meet all those requirements and are available for both Android and Apple mobile devices are:

• ABBYY's mobile apps, which come by a few different names at various price points, and

• SwiftScan (formerly called Scanbot Pro; free to download and a few dollars per month to get a version with OCR and e-signature tools).

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If you're going paperless, you need to be able to sign documents without printing them. You should be able to sign most documents digitally, with very few exceptions. To do it, you need an app that lets you create a digital signature and apply it to files.

A few examples of software that includes e-signature tools are:

• Adobe Reader,

• Adobe Acrobat,

• Preview for macOS (shown above),

• DocuSign,

• HelloSign, and

• SwiftScan (mentioned previously).

To get started, you have to create a signature. This step is often the hardest part because signatures tend to look sloppy when made with a mouse, finger and touchscreen, or stylus. Typically, there's also an option to sign your name in ink on paper and then make a scan of it. The good news is once you make a signature that you like, you can save it and reuse it. 

If you need more details, see how to sign a PDF using Acrobat Reader and how to Sign a PDF in macOS Preview.

4. A Cloud Storage and Sharing Service 

A cloud storage service makes all your documents available to you no matter what device you have at hand. They also include features for sharing documents, so that you don't have to email large files and worry about them being rejected for their size.

A few of the best-known file storage services are Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, and Apple iCloud Drive.

Many file-syncing programs let you save offline copies of documents to your devices, too, which is extra handy for anything you might need in a semi-emergency, such as insurance certificates, an ID, or names and phone numbers in a phone tree.

Some of the very best file-syncing services also have document sharing tools, too. Typically, you put the files you want to share into a folder in your syncing or cloud storage app and right-click to get a link that you can share. From that link, the recipient can download the files. Depending on which service you have, you might have the option to see when or how often the person downloads the file. Some services, including Dropbox (the paid version anyway), let you create an expiration date for access.

5. A Note-Taking App

Note-taking apps come in handy for storing and sorting a wide variety of ideas, recommendations, notes, recipes, news articles, and other content that might have once found its way onto paper. With a note-taking app, you can skip the paper and go straight into capturing these ideas electronically.

The three note-taking apps that I recommend most often are Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and Joplin.

If you tend to print web pages, whether to read articles or save recipes, a note-taking app with a web clipper will help you go paperless. This feature lets you copy all the content of a web page, except the ads and other junk, into a new note in your note-taking app. I personally use the web clipper in my note-taking app to save and organize recipes.

Note-taking apps also work well for jotting down recommendations people give you for restaurants, movies, TV shows, music, businesses, and so forth. They're also wonderful for copying down miscellaneous information, such as the opening hours of a business—just use the app to snap a picture and save it as a note.

Look Forward, Start Today

One final piece of advice about going paperless is to start today and look forward rather than backward. What I mean by that is don't get hung up on digitizing whatever backlog of paper you have. Instead, adopt a few apps that will help you be paperless starting now, and you can move forward with your new habits. You can always deal with the backlog later… or shove your old papers into a box, stick them in the back of a closet, and forget about them.