Defining a Paperless Office

People used to talk about "inbox zero." That was the twenty-eight seconds that we had that one time at 2:28AM one early Sunday morning when there was nothing at all left in the inbox. Of course, now a lot of us just look to keep our heads above water, let alone aiming for zero.

An awful lot of people are eerily close to "inbox zero" while worrying about (or worse, experiencing) the dreaded "paper avalanche."

It's awfully hard to stay organized with all that paper floating around. But one reason a lot of people don't shoot toward a "paperless office" is because they don't know what it means, or if it's possible.

Wikipedia may not be admissible in court, but it works for my purposes. I'm going to adopt the following definition for a paperless office:

A paperless office is the basic idea was that office automation would make paper redundant for routine tasks such as record-keeping and bookkeeping.

There are several things you can use to make your office more "paperless," as long you know what your goal is and how far you're willing to go to achieve it. Those things include voice recognition software, a scanner, email, electronic faxing, and outsourcing of paper-based tasks (like mailings).