Last week, I wrote about hiring a virtual assistant to help with research, proofreading, and other activities. This week, I'll share another time-saving tip that's worked well for me. Then in the comments, I'd love to know how you squeeze more productivity into your day. Several years ago, after walking to Kinko's to fax over a contract to a client, then having said client fall through, I vowed never to fax another contract again. Sure, I could set up a fax line for my home office to save the time and money it takes to fax something Kinko's, but who the heck uses fax machines these days when email is so much faster? Do I really want to work with clients who are such technophobes they insist on getting a fax? Besides, I know from working in offices that half the time documents sit in the fax machine and never get claimed or get lost amidst the spammy faxes for vacation getaways and marketing schemes. Scanning contracts, converting them to PDF, and then sending via email has proved to be a way better system for me. But what about when my scanner's on the fritz or I'm working out of a coffeeshop or I just don't feel like buying another ream of paper because I'd rather be writing? That's when I remembered I have a scan of my signature saved to my computer. Depending on how the contract is formatted and how much of a stickler the client is, I can often plop my signature into the contract, type in the date, convert it to PDF, and email it without printing a single page. I'm kind of obsessed with my new discovery and its time-saving potential given the huge stack of contracts I've already scanned and emailed over the course of my career. How do you carve out more time to write? Do you have a secret weapon for automating invoices, contracts, or other tasks? Do tell! Flickr photo courtesy of purplemattfish