Photo: Sarah Williams
Paper bogs you down and is inconvenient to manage. If you’re in transit, the last thing you want to do is scurry around the airport or bus terminal looking for a way to print and scan a time-sensitive document. Even when you’re more or less settled, paper is persona non grata: the more you accumulate during your stay, the more clutter you have to deal with next time you hit the road. Or, you might be living in a country with limited or no access to printing. In Nepal, where my husband and I live part-time, electricity is sometimes turned off for as many as 12 hours a day. If we want to print anything, we have to wait for the right window of time.
Of course, you could lug your own printer and scanner around the world, but that only addresses one aspect of the overall problem of paper. Instead, set yourself free forever by setting up a completely paperless office. Here’s how to avoid printing documents that need to be filled out or require a signature.
When you need to enter information:
Typically, forms and documents to be filled out will be saved as PDFs. If the PDF includes editable fields, you can use Adobe Reader to fill it out, which is free. If the form doesn’t include editable fields, you can still edit the document, but you’ll need Adobe Acrobat or a similar piece of software (usually not free). Options include PDFPen, PDFClerk, CutePDF, and PDF995.
If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat or anything similar and aren’t able to get it, but you do have image processing software like Photoshop or Gimp, you can use this workaround:
- Convert the PDF to a JPEG. Choose File>Save As. From the Format menu, select JPEG. Typically, a multi-page file will automatically be saved as several JPEGs, one per page.
- Open the file in your image program. Choose File>Open and navigate to where you saved the JPEG or JPEGs.
- Fill out the form. This may differ depending on your program. In Photoshop, for example, click on the Text tool in the Tools menu and then click on the place you want to write. Make sure you use a black font that’s easy to read and matches the size of the text in the document. If you hit the spacebar or return key to move to the next field, then changing the font size or face later will mess up your spacing. Instead, create a new piece of text for each field.
- Save the document as a PDF. Choose File>Print and choose Adobe PDF as your printer. Save this file with a different name from the original, in case you need to redo anything later.
- Double-check your work. Open the file in Acrobat Reader (or Preview on a Mac) to make sure it looks okay before emailing it to the recipient.
When you need to include a signature
- Write your signature. Put a piece of paper on top of a few others to create a surface that’s not too hard. Use a black or blue sharpie and sign your name in large letters, larger than you normally would but not so large that it looks different from your normal signature. Try not to be too perfectionist–if you feel awkward, sign your name a few extra times on the paper until you get one you like.
- Scan the paper. If you don’t have a scanner, tape the signature paper to a white wall, make sure you have plenty of natural light with no glare, and snap a few photos at high resolution.
- Edit the signature. Use your favorite image-editing program to crop the signature so that there’s not a lot of white space around it. If your signature has long-tailed letters or exciting curly bits that touch or cross the line when you sign a document, you’ll need to make the background transparent. Productivity 51 has a good tutorial for making your signature transparent in Photoshop. On a Mac, you can also just open the image in Preview, click and hold Select, choose Instant Alpha, and click on the white space around the signature to make it transparent.
- Save your signature in a place you can find it easily.
Now, when you need to sign a document, copy and paste the signature from the image file directly onto the document. No more printing–and you’ll save time too.
What if you need to include someone else’s signature on a document? Well, you might offer to teach them how to scan their signature. Ultimately, though, you can’t force other people to set up a paperless office. The technology is easy enough, it’s more the mental block you have to contend with. The whole concept of digitizing signatures makes some people nervous because, “Oh, no, now you have a copy of my signature that you can use whenever you want to!”–never thinking that of course, having a copy of a written signature on a piece of paper amounts to exactly the same thing.
I want to help you find your calm center and experience travel with courage, curiosity and compassion.
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