002: Going paperless

Season #1 Episode #2

This episode talks about the second key foundation of an efficient life admin system: going paperless.

How to go paperless step by step

The hosts, Mia and Dinah, describe the five steps they went through to go paperless:

  1. Setting up a dedicated admin email address and cloud storage account for life admin.
  2. Setting up a password manager to remember and protect online accounts.
  3. Opting out of paper billing, statements and notifications.
  4. Throwing out existing paper they no longer needed.
  5. Scanning the remaining papers and uploading them to the cloud storage drive.

They talk about the criteria they used to decide what to keep, including tax records.

The benefits of going paperless include:

  • reducing clutter
  • minimising the need and effort to do filing or recycling
  • providing remote access to key documents to allow you to share information or do life admin tasks whenever are wherever you like
  • reducing paper consumption to support environmental sustainability.

Life admin highs of the week

  • Dinah talks about the joy of visiting the orthodontist and scanning and filing the contract in Google Drive while still at the office, eliminating the need to bring more paper into her home.
  • Mia talks about the peace of mind of removing the paper clutter from her home and the extra space and focus that emerged.

Life admin low of the week

  • Dinah talks about the firehose of paper that's still coming into her house relating to her children’s school and extracurricular activities.

Power tool

Dinah talks about how Brian Tracy's book Eat That Frog directs readers to focus on critical tasks and not get bogged down in the less important, quicker tasks.

Life admin resources

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