How the Tiny Scanner App Saved Me From Total Paperwork Dysfunction

Fear and loathing in the modern office

This is “I Can’t Live Without,” a column about the apps, gadgets, and services that make all the difference.

The unsung hero of my busted iPhone 6 is the Tiny Scanner app, which, if you’re not familiar, does exactly what its name suggests. It scans documents, and insofar as conventional scanners dwarf my phone, it is tiny. It is also a hedge against chaos and decay, and filing cabinets. It helped restore a sense of control after dysfunction derailed my professional prospects.

I’ve never been able to do paperwork. I assert this from the calm shores of self-acceptance, and I realize how prosaic it must sound, how typical. After all, everyone struggles with this stuff. Everyone agrees it sucks. Nobody has a facility for taxes, nobody likes submitting travel and expenses, we all hate TPS reports, and nobody — except lovelorn fifth graders and President Trump — delights in their own signature.

But these are the elements of adulthood’s forever bureaucracy, so people step up. They get their shit together. They sign things, send them, save them. They go to Kinko’s on their lunch breaks. Even as millennials acknowledge the systemic tendrils of generational burnout, they still RSVP to weddings and apply…