Start where you are and you will see progress

One receipt at a time

Have you ever been faced with an overwhelming task? We all have. For me it is the pile of receipts and miscellaneous papers on top of my printer, waiting to be dealt with. (And that is just the beginning of my office tidying project.)

Like the journey of a thousand miles that begins with the first step, you have to just start with one piece of paper and deal with it. 

I like to think of it as a treasure hunt, or a game of “Go Fish”! Maybe in this pile I will find that lost business card of the person I wanted to reach, or the receipt I needed to submit for a health care benefit. Maybe it will be a love note that I tucked away, or  a schedule for an event I wanted to attend.

I recently bought an iPad2 with unexpected money from a tax return (which I completed after finding last year’s receipts!). I have purchased a couple of apps that make my life easier. One is iExpenseIt. As I go through my pile of papers I enter my receipts and then happily throw them away if I don’t need to keep them. I can even take a picture of a receipt or item purchased and insert it into the record, before I put the receipt in the “to be filed” pile. Some receipts I need to also track separately in a shared document with my husband or due to my business ventures. For these I also use GoogleDocs whether I am at my PC at home, at work, or now conveniently, using the GoDocs app, on my iPad2. Some of the other iPod/iPad apps I use while organizing my papers are Contacts (free), Grocery Gadget pro , Dropbox (free – and has a desktop version to synchronize files), and Things, the fabulous project management app I just bought.

I am fortunate to have been able to make the investment in my “tech toys” (some as a business expense) which increase the sense of play when I enter receipts, deal with sticky notes full of mileage records and odd jottings,  and update my contacts and other project files, slowly filling my ‘blue box’ for recycling and my “to be shredded” pile. But even if I had no computers or smart phones or tablets I think I would enjoy this game. Even with a pencil and eraser and an old-timey ledger book I would feel this sense of adventure and accomplishment as I tackle that pile.

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