You’re Only 3 Simple Steps and 4 Apps Away From a Paperless Mac

A 5-minute system for organising your digital life (while keeping the paper that matters)

Illustration by Author

Deciding to go paperless is the easy part.

Knowing where to put things, and being able to find them when they’re needed? That can feel overwhelmingly hard! I’ve spent four years refining a paperless workflow for my design business and my personal life, and I’m happy to say that it now works well on all my Apple devices¹.

3 Steps

Every effective paperless method addresses three core functions: capture, file, and retrieve.

1. Capture

You’ll need at least one capture point—or inbox—for everything you choose to save in a digital form.

David Allen, in his Getting Things Done (GTD) method, recommends only having the smallest number of inboxes that you can function well with.

I have six capture points for important things (note: not one of them is a random, loose piece of paper!):

1. Paper notebook (thoughts, notes, goals) Click here to read about the book I use
2. Physical inbox for papers to be scanned
3. Email (tasks, information…