Minimalism Monday - My Digital Hacks for Going Paperless

We live in an incredible digital age where we have never had it easier! In fact, the most complicated part about going paperless and not having to deal with the baggage of filing cabinets and excess note books is the excess of platforms to choose from!

So I thought I would share with you my organisational system which is completely digital baby and keeps me on track for EVERYTHING! Where I need to be, what I need to do, where I’m up to with projects and where all my important assignments/reports/files are not only stored but also backed up.

Are you ready? Let’s get into it…

Calendars

This has been life changing! Seriously, if you don’t believe me just try it for yourself. So what you do is not only ditch your paper planner (although you can keep it going also, I currently use mine as more of a journal) but you log every single hour of your day into that calendar. I have my Macbook and iPhone synced so that every addition to the calendar is updated on both devices. This gives you a great way to track exactly what you are doing in a day, or for the times left free you can log in what you might like to be doing at that time. This is so that you always have a guide and can really boost your productivity.

A little extra hack for this is that you can ‘repeat weekly’ for consistent time blocks that definitely happen that time each week. Say you have your work hours put in there are 9-5 Monday – Friday or you get acupuncture every fortnight. I heard about the concept of tracking every hour in your day using Calendars years ago but only recently finally adopted it so don’t waste any more time, get right into this.

Lists
Exact same story as my calendar, my lists are kept on my phone and my laptop for easy access. Whatever you would usually write down in books or pieces of paper can now be efficiently transferred into perfectly categorised lists. Boy, do I have some lists! Everything from my daily ‘to-do’ to books I want to read and movies I want to watch, have their own list I can refer back to. I LIVE by lists and it is way easier keeping track with my ‘to-do’s’ on the go when they are on my phone and laptop rather than in a book.

Google Docs and Google Sheets
You can access these documents from wherever you are so long as you remember your password but the true beauty in your Google Drive is the way you can use Google Sheets. I like to keep a goal tracking sheet where I have split up my 2018 goals into 6 month and then monthly breakdowns. I then like to track my progress for how I am going with these goals. They also have a fantastic monthly finances spreadsheet which works amazingly in keeping on check with your budgeting. I even have a project tracker for my ’30 books in 2018’ project where I track what books I’ve finished, which ones I want to read and key takeaways / ratings for reference of the books I have read.

Dropbox

A similar story to your Google Drive, Dropbox keeps Word documents or pictures off your computer and up in the cloud instead. I not only like to keep my desktop clean and running smoothly but it also serves as a backup for important documents that you want to keep on your device and in the cloud. Again, another huge benefit, especially if you use multiple devices, is that you can access your documents from anywhere. You can also set up an autosave function where anything you are working on from your device is automatically updated in the cloud – can you really get much better than that?!

Hard Drives

Lastly, for those all-important documents or to back up all of your photos I still like to use a good ol’ hard drive. There’s something about the security in how tangible hard drives are that makes me trust them a little more than the cloud, but really it just acts as another back up and another way of keeping your computer clear of too many files.

So those are my favourite digital hacks that will help you organise your files and life…especially if you are trying to go fully paperless!