5 Ways Powerful Paperless Proactivity Provides Personal Progress

Yes, it's true. I actually get paid to come up with smarmy headlines like that!

However, my own efforts at alliteration notwithstanding, this post does contain some great info, and I would like to thank the wonderful Debra Moorhead for tagging me with what she is calling A Paperless Meme.

In short, Debra is asking us to discuss the many ways that we live without paper, and in today's world of environmental care and awareness, I was more than happy to dish on how paper is something that my office largely does without!

Photo Credit: Eduardo Siqueira FilhoBy reading Debra's original post and checking out the other people that she has tagged, you will undoubtedly get some great ideas about how to prune the paper habit. For me, I came up with a bunch of ways that personal progress can be effectively accomplished without cutting down a single tree:

1) eBooks – Far be it from me to tell anyone that they should give up the "curl up in a chair" value of a good old-fashioned book. However, thanks to websites like Mobipocket and software like eBook to Images, reading an eBook no longer means that you have to park it in front of your computer monitor for 8 hours at a time!

What's that? You say you want some free eBooks? How about this one, or this one, or a whole pile of them right over here.

2) Audio Books – Are you a die-hard multi-tasker? If so, then audio books are for you! You can listen to them while you exercise, while you clean your house, while you drive, even while you take a shower or a bath!

Audio Books come in all sorts of cool subjects, and you can start by checking out Amazon.com's list of personal development audio books, or just cruise on over to Audible.com to check out one of the largest collections of audio books available on the Internet. 

3) Cellular Phones – What? Use your cell phone as a personal growth tool? Oh yes, Grasshopper!

I use my cell phone to send myself text messages when I think of important things that I want to remember. I use it to keep notes when I am away from my computer, and I even use it to record audio messages to myself if I don't feel like doing all of that typing.

All of those practices take the place of writing things down on paper, and consequently having to keep track of those pieces of paper later on down the road.

4) Email – When was the last time you sat down and wrote a real letter? You know the kind I mean. You break out a piece of paper and a pen, toss the letter in a paper envelope, go stand in line at the post office to get a stamp, and then send it off to your recipient. Once the letter arrives, the recipient will then have to decide whether to keep that piece of paper for its enormous sentimental value, or just toss it in the trash, adding to the growing landfill problem that our environment already has.

Thanks, but no thanks. Email is faster, cleaner, and more easily archived. If you truly feel like giving someone a written record of the fact that you exist, send them a birthday or a Christmas card, or maybe even a present with a hand-written note. However, when it comes to frequent correspondence, save the time and the trees by sending that love electronically.

5) EverNote – In a word – awesome! This program not only has every feature you could possibly imagine for keeping written records of everything under the sun, but 95% of the features are fully functional even in the free version of the software.

I won't list out the dozens of simple ways that EverNote can help you keep track of things in a paperless office while also maintaining a high level of productivity, but I will say this: only 2 programs start when my computer starts; my web browser, and EverNote. 'Nuff said.

Kill Some Trees!

Yup, after all that great stuff I just said about having a paperless personal progress program, now I'm going to go right back and give you 3 good examples of things that are worth a tree or two (provided you plant 2 or 3 in their place, of course!).

Written Down Goals

No, not typed out. Not recorded with your voice recorder or on your cell phone. Not morphed into cutesy little graphics that decorate your computer or your website. WRITTEN DOWN – as in pen and paper. If you want to truly "turn on" your subconscious mind and make it into a 24-hour per day idea machine for attaining your goals, then write them down! Do it every day. In fact, do it a few times every day. Actually, just write an essay every day about your glorious goals. Once you've attained your goals, do it all over again with a new set of goals.

In fact, buy yourself a nice pen while you're at it. You're going to need it! 

Gratitude Journal

If you aren't writing down the things that you have to be grateful for every day, then guess what? You aren't grateful enough! Did you wake up this morning? Yes? Then you have something to be grateful for. Every breath you take, every piece of food that you eat, every vision of beauty that you see – every everything that doesn't actually kill you has value. Write down your Gratitude bits every day and watch as more things to be grateful for miraculously start showing up in your life!

Vision Board

Do you have pictures of the things that you want scattered throughout your home and/or office? Is your vision board so huge that you have to argue with your significant other about where to put it because he/she doesn't want pictures of race cars, huge mansions, piles of money, and big-screen TV's to be part of the decorative motif of your home? No? Do it, and then sit back and watch the fun begin as those things start to show up in your life. Then your significant other will REALLY have to rearrange the furniture!

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