Going inbox-zero on your paper mail, an old post at Signal vs. Noise, talks about the joys of getting organized using the Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner, a shredder, and a solo Highrise account.
The beauty of the ScanSnap is its utterly brain-dead simple mode of use. You feed it a document, click the scan button on the device itself, and a PDF lands on your desktop. No continuous configuration, just one-click-straight-to-PDF goodness.After the document is PDF'ed, it goes straight to the shredder. No clutter, no pile, just the pleasurable sound of paper I don't have to worry about any more.
The final step is upload to Highrise. I have contacts for all the major bills I pay. So one for AT&T, one for People's Gas, and so on. They're all aggregated by the bills tag, which with the new tag streams allow me to see everything going through. I also have accounts for all the major service providers I use. There's one for the lawyer, one for the mechanic, one for the doctor.
With the rhythm of "document goes in, follow-up task is set, and paper is gone" I've finally been able to beat The Pile and achieve the same level of inbox-zero zen that I have for Mail.app.
