After this year’s Macworld|iWorld, I finally caved and bought OmniFocus, which I had been coveting from afar for nearly two years.[1]
When I purchased it, I also went out and purchased the eBook Creating Flow With OmniFocus by Kourosh Dini, MD.[2]
This is a fantastic book, and two related passages really resonated with me, which I hope Dr. Dini won’t mind me quoting here:
A piano teacher of mine from years past, who I respect deeply and more so with each day that passes, once taught me that even if I have no time to practice in a day, that I should at least touch the keys that day. While it seems odd to just touch the keys, she was right. There is something absolutely crucial to a daily visit in any craft, if only for a moment, to keeping its fire burning.
and…
I generally try to spend about a half-hour on the task though sometimes I do more and sometimes I do less depending on other obligations and my general energy level. As noted earlier, the words of wisdom my piano teacher once taught me was to at least touch the keys of the piano when I felt I had no time to practice. Sometimes the act would actually turn into a good practice session. As long as I can genuinely sit for a moment in the context of the task or project with consideration, i.e. “touch the keys of the piano”, I check it off.
This is such great advice in so many areas of our life, but I am going to attempt to apply it to going paperless.
No matter how efficient you make your paperless system, it will involve at least some work. You will need to open the mail. You will need to prep your documents, you will need to actually scan them, you will need to do something with the electronic documents.
In all likelihood, there will be many times that you just don’t feel like doing it or don’t have time, even when it is your scheduled scanning time.[3]
In these situations, I recommend that you at the very least “touch the keys”. Tell yourself that you are just going to run the documents through the scanner and that you will process them later.
Chances are, once you sit down to actually do the scanning, you will just go through and do everything anyways. If not, not a problem. At the very least the paper is out of your way and can focus on the processing next time.
Do you have any other tips for doing your paperless processing when you don’t feel like it? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
(Photo by JoshSemans)
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All I want to know is: What took me so long? Amazing program. Yes, I bought the iPad and iPhone versions too. ↩
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Given some of my wares, it shouldn’t surprise you that I believe in seeking out help to do things right from the start rather than wasting time. ↩
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You do have a scheduled time to process your documents, don’t you? If not, I recommend that you start. ↩
