Avoid Common Printing Needs

Now that you’ve taken numerous steps to avoid receiving paper from others, and to get rid of the paper you still do receive, there remains another piece of the puzzle: how to stop generating more paper of your own. Kicking the printing habit can be hard, but in this chapter I help you to identify alternative ways in which you can achieve roughly the same end result.

Think (and Track) When You Print

You may hit Command-P dozens of times each day, out of habit or necessity. Sometimes printing truly is necessary—until all your busi­ness associates and family members join the paperless revolution, you’ll be obligated to print certain things for their consumption. But countless pages are printed every day just because the documents’ creators want­ed to have copies “for their records” or “just in case.” Those printed pages are the ones you can most easily eliminate.

So, as an exercise, try this for a week. Put a piece of paper—yes, paper!—next to your printer, with three columns: Document, Pages, and Purpose. Every single time you pick up something from the printer, jot down the following information:

• Document: This could be the document’s name, or just a word or two that reminds you what it was.
• Pages: The number of pages in that document.
• Purpose: Let’s keep it simple, and make it one of F (for file), R (for review), or O (for other people). Things you print simply to put in a folder or filing cabinet get an F; things you print because you need to read them on the plane, or mark them up with comments, or otherwise review them, get an R; and things you print because you have to give or send them to someone else get an O. (Feel free to expand or customize this list according to your needs.)

At the end of the week, review your list. You may be surprised at how many pages you’ve printed, and of those, how many are less than essential. Merely paying attention to what you print may help you be more conscious of how (un)necessary certain printouts are, and to cut back accordingly. But you may be able to go further. You’re looking to eliminate as many of the “F” and “R” items as you can. I hope I’ve per­suaded you in the course of this book that digital copies of files (which you already have, since you printed them) are just as useful as printed copies, and often more so—as long as they’re diligently preserved, backed up, and accessible when you need them. Unless you’re comply­ing with rules set down by your employer, the government, or some other entity, the only thing forcing you to keep printing “F” items is habit. Try going without printing those items for a week or two (keep­ing in mind the other suggestions later in this chapter) and see how you feel.

And as for the “R” items…

Review and Annotate Documents

If you’ve spent years editing documents by hand, on paper, in red ink, it can feel unsettling to think about switching to a paperless method. I can’t change how you feel, but I can tell you that paperless reviewing and annotation tools exist, are both powerful and easy to use, and offer numerous advantages over paper. I think they’re well worth a try.

Many Mac apps that can open PDFs—including Preview (included with macOS), PDFpen, DEVONthink, and Acrobat Pro, among others—can also annotate them. Annotations are markings and notes that appear on a transparent “layer” above the document itself. Annotations don’t alter the existing contents of the document, but they do add lines, shapes, sticky notes, comments, and in some cases traditional copy­edit­ing marks. You can even use annotations to highlight text, in much the same way you could with a pen and highlighter. But, on a PDF, you’re not limited in the length or number of comments (you’ll never run out of virtual space); you can use multiple colors; and many people can annotate a document without making it unusable. Consult the Help menu in Preview or your favorite PDF app for instructions on using its annotation features.

An increasing number of iOS apps can do the same thing. I find the iPad to work especially well for annotating PDFs because the screen is so much larger and the virtual keyboard more comfortable than the tiny ones on the iPhone or iPod touch—and with an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil, the experience will be as close to writing on paper as you can get in the digital world. You can annotate PDFs on an iOS device using apps such as PDFpen 2, GoodNotes, GoodReader, and PDF Expert. (Of these, all but GoodReader can also fill in PDF forms.)

Take Notes without Paper

For those of us who spend hours every day sitting in meetings or mak­ing phone calls, note-taking is a common reasons to generate lots of paper. You already know you can take notes on a com­put­er, but that’s not always practical—especially if you’re not a touch typist or if the use of a laptop in a meeting would be distracting. And although it’s pos­sible to type notes on an iPhone or iPod touch, it’s tedious to do so except when the notes are quite short.

However, once again, the iPad makes a fantastic tool for taking notes. You can either type on its virtual keyboard or write on the screen with a fingertip or a stylus (or with an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro) using a suitable note-taking app. And several, including WritePad for iPad and 7notes HD Premium, offer handwriting recognition, rather than simply saving your scrawled notes as a graphic. Dictation on an iPad or iPhone is a great way to take notes too, depending on where you are (not great in a coffee shop; perfectly fine when sitting on the sofa, as long as sound from your TV or stereo doesn’t interfere).

Send Invoices Electronically

Earlier in this book, I suggested that you try to Receive Invoices Electronically, if your work requires you to process invoices from others. If, on the other hand, you bill someone else for your products or services, you can return the favor by sending invoices electronically. Besides saving paper, envelopes, and stamps, electronic invoicing is faster and more efficient.

Before you switch to electronic invoicing with any of your clients, check with them to make sure they agree, and ask where invoices should be sent. (They may, for example, ask that you email them to a particular address in the billing department.) If a client can’t accept emailed in­voices, see if fax is acceptable—and then read Fax without Paper to find out how to send your faxes by email.

Although most businesses can read email attachments in common for­mats like .doc, I recommend always sending invoices as PDF files. Not only is PDF the most nearly universal format, but a PDF is much less likely to be accidentally altered by the recipient.

If you use accounting software such as AccountEdge or QuickBooks (including QuickBooks Online), you can send a PDF invoice by email as you create it. If, however, you create invoices manually using a word processor, spreadsheet, or other app, you can turn it into a PDF and email it as follows:

1. Choose File > Print.
2. From the PDF pop-up menu in the bottom-left corner of the Print dialog, choose Mail PDF.

   This creates a PDF and attaches it to an outgoing email message automatically, but doesn’t give you the opportunity to rename the attachment (see Choose a Naming Convention) or save a copy for your records. If you want to do either of these things, instead choose Save as PDF, name and save the file, and manually attach it to a new email message.

3. In a few moments, your email client should display a new message window, with the PDF already attached. Fill in the recipient, subject, and body of the message, and click Send.

Fax (Paperlessly) When Email Isn’t an Option

There’s a chapter on this topic (Fax without Paper) later in the book, but I wanted to bring it up here because a common reason to print something is so you can fax it with a conventional fax machine. Although some documents can be sent only by fax and not, say, as email attachments, that doesn’t mean you have to print anything. So if you’re still using a stand-alone fax machine, take this opportunity to read up on other approaches, and then free up even more desk space!

Always Print to PDF When Possible

If you pay bills, make purchases, or plan travel online, you’re bound to see quite a few Web pages that summarize your transaction and urge you to print the receipt for your records—maybe even with an ostensibly helpful “printer-friendly format” button. Yes, you should keep records of your purchases and payments. But no, you don’t have to print these pages to do so—at least not on paper.

Instead, when you see one of these pages, do one of the following:

• See if an email receipt arrives too: More often than not, when I make purchases online I get a receipt by email within minutes, and that receipt contains exactly the same information that’s on the “print me” page. Since I save my incoming email, I already have a record of the transaction and don’t need another one.
• Print to PDF: While viewing a Web page (or a document in almost any macOS app), you can save it as a PDF in a special folder—~/Documents/Web Receipts—with just two clicks:
  1. Choose File > Print.
  2. From the PDF pop-up menu in the bottom-left corner of the Print dialog, choose Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder.

  I do suggest visiting the ~/Documents/Web Receipts folder from time to time and moving the files to more specific locations (as well as, if necessary, renaming them) so that you can find them easily.

• Print a PDF to a document manager: Some document manag­ers, including DEVONthink, add their own commands to the PDF pop-up menu described in the previous item. So instead of choosing Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder, you could instead choose (for example) Save PDF to DEVONthink Professional, which can then categorize it manually or automatically.

Never Print “Just in Case”

I have to admit I do this myself on occasion, even today. There are certain kinds of documents that I’m so accustomed to printing, or so paranoid about having when I need them, that I instinctively hit Command-P when they appear on my screen.

I’m thinking of things like travel itineraries, for example—since I have an e-ticket, won’t I need to show something to the agent at the check-in desk? (In fact, I know I don’t. I may be able to show a barcode on my iPhone or Apple Watch using Wallet. Or, I can simply show my ID—or scan it at an automated kiosk—and the airline will look up my reserva­tion and print out a boarding pass.) The same goes for certain receipts, such as when I pay my taxes online, and other documents for which the stakes are fairly high—I absolutely must be able to prove that I made that reservation, paid that fee, or whatever.

But what I know deep down is that nearly always, I’m no better off with a piece of paper than with a digital copy of the same doc­ument on my iOS device or Apple Watch. Sure, I may need a confir­mation number or evidence that I bought something, but almost with­out exception, the information itself—not the physical copy of it—suffices.

In other words: print only when you know you’ll need a document on paper, not out of habit or when you only worry that you might need it!

Carry a Mobile Device Instead of Paper

I always carry an iPhone with me, and when that’s not adequate for my needs, I take my iPad too. These devices, along with the iPod touch, let you store and display PDF files (including ones you’ve scanned)—not to mention books, newspapers, and other documents that would otherwise require a lot of paper. Android devices can also display PDFs using, for example, Adobe Acrobat Reader.

iPhones (and Apple Watches) also include Wallet, which lets you store scannable tickets (for air and train travel, movies, concerts, and other events), coupons, and more—letting you avoid paper without even bothering to create and sync PDFs.

So instead of printing out a receipt, travel itinerary, or other document you received online, put it on your mobile device. It’s almost always a suitable substitute for paper. And, of course, you can use your mobile device for taking notes, managing shopping lists, and other tasks that would ordinarily require paper.

The options for transferring PDFs to a mobile device vary by platform. With an iOS device, for example, you could copy them to iCloud Drive or your Dropbox and then use the iCloud Drive or Dropbox app to view them on the go. PDFpen can sync files between its Mac and iOS versions using Dropbox or iCloud. Or, if you use DEVONthink on your Mac, you can sync your document database with DEVONthink To Go running on an iOS device.