"Staying organized is a kind of hygiene. It's almost never a one-and-done clean-up job. So think about dental hygiene. We learn to brush our teeth twice a day, floss once a day, and see a dentist every six months to catch problems before they get worse. However, if you don't follow that schedule precisely, you can still have good dental hygiene. You just have to do enough."
"Going paperless is very much like that. Here, I want to share with you the plan I used to remove most paper from my life. It should help you get started, but know in advance that you don't have to stick to it exactly every moment of every day. You can mess up. You can forget. So long as you get into the habit most of the time, you'll find yourself mostly paperless in a couple of months."
Achieving a mostly paperless life requires ongoing, flexible maintenance similar to dental hygiene. Regular small actions—scanning, sorting, and occasional cleanup—prevent accumulation without demanding perfection. Consistency matters more than exact adherence; occasional lapses do not undo progress. Practical setup steps include choosing cloud storage to ensure backups and creating a default inbox folder for newly scanned documents to handle busy moments. Following a simple, repeatable routine most of the time can eliminate most paper within a few months. The process emphasizes habit formation over one-time purging and tolerates occasional forgetfulness.
Read at WIRED
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