I confess…I love, love, love me some paper! I like pretty, handmade paper, adore post-it notes, relish my to-do lists and feel most at home nestled into my desk with my 15 to 20 active projects – all made visible by the notes and progress reports captured on sheets and sheets of paper.
My husband calls me Miss Many-Papers. I know I’m a verbal processor. I take in information from the world through reading and writing. I process it, make it mine, and create what I put into the world always first through writing.
Perhaps you fit one of these paper-lover profiles:
Your a Piler, not a Filer: Many of us suffer from out of sight out of mind syndrome. A paper that goes into a steel box ceases to exist, and what the heck do you call the file, anyway?
Your a Creative Visionary: Seized by creative aha! moments at the oddest of times, you grab for napkins, the backs of envelopes, gumwrappers, and menus to scribble your brainstorms. They fill your pockets, backpacks, kitchen table, and nooks and crannies at home.
You’re Mouse Trigger-Happy – printing every recipe, article, website, or upcoming event that ignites a spark.
You’re a Pulp Pleasure-Hound: You collect little pretty notebooks, day planners and pads. You always pick up a few extra greeting cards for those upcoming birthdays you may be without. You can’t imagine giving up your magazine subscriptions.
A client recently awkwardly confessed, “Sometimes I look at my piles of paper as a work of art. Is that strange?”
I told her I thought it was beautiful. Our paper piles are an outward expression of the decisions we make (or procrastinate making), our personalities, our desires and devotions, and a record of the life we’re creating.
Another client whooped with joy after we spent many hours going through boxes of random paper when she came across a bound stack, what she called her “paper hub”, the center, the heart, of her paper from which all other papers were extensions. The bound stack contained visions for her life she had written 20 years prior – all of which were unfolding to fruition right on target. How’s that for some powerful paper?
Love of paper is not a problem.
What is a problem is when the piles get too big, when we lose information, when we can’t find what we need when we need it, when the visual clutter starts compromising our ability to focus on the task at hand, and drains our energy – negating the joy the paper gave us in the first place.
And here’s a statistic that I find awakening: “The pulp and paper industry is the single largest consumer of water used in industrial activities in OECD countries and is the third greatest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, after the chemical and steel industries.”
Fact from www.environmentalpaper.org/PAPER-statistics.html
Yikes! Moe consequences bigger than me to chew upon.
Here are some suggestions for pruning your plethora of paper:
1. For Everyone: Stop unwanted paper from coming in to begin with. Go to DMAChoice.org to put a stop to junk mail and credit card offers, significantly reducing the paper flow in.
2. For the Pilers: Use vertical systems to get the paper
off the floor and crowded desktops -There’s an organizing adage Horizontal = Hidden, Vertical = Visible. Here’s my latest favorite from Reisenthel.
3. For the Creative Visionaries: Carry a notebook at all times to capture your inspirations. Productivity guru, David Allen, coins this item a “ubiquitous capture tool.” He sagely notes in his book, Ready for Anything, “Creativity shows up when there’s space.” If there’s a paper glut, it’s harder to receive the fresh, energized ideas. Trust that letting go will not stop the flow of creativity; it will support it.
4. For the Mouse Trigger-Fingers: Pause before you print. Email cut and pasted text or a link to yourself instead of printing. Formal Google CIO, Douglas Merrill describes in detail how you can use Gmail as a virtual file cabinet – easily retrieving information whenever you need it and keeping it in categories for storing. His book Getting Organized in the Google Era gives an excellent tour of Gmail’s simple organizing capabilities.
5. For the Pulp Pleasure-hound: Relish your collection by all means – but be sure to break out the stash and relish using what you’ve got. Practice gratitude and abundance affirmations to remind yourself that beauty is everywhere and there’s an endless supply of abundance flowing to you at all times.
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