Papers and attachments

This week was rather busy with decluttering memories, uni papers, case studies, all those important papers that made my MSc Investment and Finance degree possible. I had tons of paper, essays, preparations, past exams, case studies that I read to prepare for my dissertation, projects, so basically my memories from my last year in uni.

It was hard to part all of these papers, cause they reminded me one hard but beautiful part of my life. Reminded me of the sleepless nights, coffee addiction, suffering, thinking I’m stupid cause I didn’t understand back then econometrics and financial modelling as much as I wanted to. The notes, the lecture notes, exams and all those readings, tests etc… Yeah was hard to part.

I really didn’t intend to part those documents, but let’s be realistic, the chances are closer to 0 than to 1 that I will ever read those papers again, but like in the movies the angel and the devil were both talking to me from my shoulders and had to make a compromise, it manifested in me taking pictures of the notes. Should have scanned them, but first, I don’t have a scanner, second, altogether there were more than 700 pages and had to go through them one by one, I took a picture about all my notes, about the case studies and readings I just took a picture of the front cover cause they are available on the internet so they can be downloaded and printed again if I would ever need them.

It took roughly 4 hours to go through them all, took pictures (302 pictures in total), upload them to my computer, than put them in external storage and categorize them all. I have to say it was worth it, but still have some books left from the uni, containing the lecture notes and my added notes, but as they not really piece of papers instead proper books I left them for now but contemplating to get rid off them too.

Problem and solution, less paper less stress.

Haven’t got a clue if it’s just me, but its difficult to get rid of these papers as I was emotionally attached to them, like loads of people to objects, they remind us to a time, to special memories and that what makes it hard.

On the positive side, it’s still easier to get rid off these papers and uni stuff than sort clothes, that’s way more difficult for me but working on that aspect too.

The goal is not the endless decluttering instead repurposing items, by getting rid of papers its just one part of the equation, going paperless is the goal, even if I would never manage to get 100% paper less, cause I like to write, read actual books instead of e-books, but reducing my footprint.

I already wrote about it, but glad that more and more companies, banks, utilities going paperless, invoicing online, so it will gradually decrease paper waste in the future, I hope more and more countries will join this and of course it is easier to sort bank statements, utility bills, invoices in the computer and make them accessible than to sort actual paper copies. If you’re afraid of losing your files, you can back up the documents in cloud too, there’s loads of free options available, you can send yourself emails with attachments, use One Drive, iCloud, google drive and others.

I hope in the future all educational institutions will go paperless in terms of their administration, make all lecture notes accessible online, also governmental institutions, all utility providers, hospitals, tax authorities and companies will follow suit. There are a lot of good examples out there, might they should develope a unified cloud based system for that, cause that would be awesome.

Strive for paperless for your sake, don’t pretend it is for the planet, it is for the planet and as much for yourself too, make your life easier. Multiple studies found that the less clutter and stuff are around you, the more productive and less stressed you become, so give it a go.

Like with most things in life, the less is more.

Your sincerely

To/Minimal