Streamline to Maximize
Conquer Paper Pile-up

When computers first blasted onto the scene, society as a whole geared up for a new paperless workforce. Today, the stark reality is that we’re producing even more paper than ever before. In fact, a recent study by Xerox reveled that there will be 50 percent more paper in offices in 2005 than there was back in 1995.

What’s really disquieting is that back in 1995, the paper pile-up was already a major concern for corporations.

“The depressing reality is that the volume of paper circulating around offices is growing, not falling…. A survey by management consultants Touche Ross found that 90 percent of companies and 75 percent of people reported problems with paperwork - a higher proportion than two years before.”

Why Do We Have a Love Affair with Paper?

Not only does technology not eliminate the paper pile up, but it also adds to it. E-mails are printed out, faxes are photocopied for all concerned parties, articles are printed off the internet to read, memos are created for meetings, bills and invoices are distributed in paper form and much more.

There are several reasons behind our love affair with paper.

“Paper remains easier to read, hold, carry and fold than any digital offering. Even as products such as Lotus Notes make collaborative computing a reality, the savviest of techno-executives continue to print out their documents…. Even after scanning and imaging arrived in the mid-1980s, computers remain a dismal substitute for paper, particularly for the human eye.”

For many of us, paper is still the easiest to use. Post-it notes abound in offices because it remains practical, even today.

“For most of us, jotting down phone numbers and scribbling notes in the margins of reports is a natural part of the way we work. And in many ways, paper is everything that the electronic medium is not: familiar, intuitive, and universal. Simply put, we're hooked on paper.”

Today piles of paper on a desk serve as a reminder for us to do something, such as follow up or take action on a particular item. We worry that if we file a piece of paper away that we’ll forget about it.

Unfortunately, studies have shown that some executives will pick up a single piece of paper from their desk thirty or forty times before acting on it.

What is the Paperwork Shuffle?

Shuffling pieces of paper around a desk makes even mundane items take longer to finish. It postpones the decision making process, which just adds another task for later. Before you know it, these few papers can quickly turn into a large pile of items that need action.

Companies that don’t have a system in place for incoming paper can almost always expect to see paper pile-up and to see executives doing the paper shuffle.

Those executives that try to make time to deal with their paper pile-up are often sidetracked before they can even begin because of interruptions.

Simple unplanned tasks, such as a telephone call or an e-mail interrupts productivity. It takes a person 20 – 30 minutes to transition into deep, critical and creative thought. When the average American worker is interrupted eight times an hour, it’s not surprising that they lose productivity because they are repeating steps to retrace where they left off.

In fact, during the course of a regular day, the average number of messages received by the typical U.S. office worker includes:

Phone calls	52
Email	36
Voicemail	23
Postal Mail	18
Interoffice	18
Fax	14
Post it	13
Pager	8
Cell phone	4
Express mail	3

With a workday jammed full of interruptions, it’s not surprising that the paper pile-up continues to have such a strong hold on today’s workforce.

Even more frustrating is that a lot of the information that comes across our desks are just mind junk. In fact, it’s increasingly difficult to identify the signal from the noise1.

What does it Really Cost You?

You’ve probably already experienced some of the costs of paper pile-up. Missed deadlines, wasted time, lost information and stress are just some of the end results of paper pile-up.

If you’ve ever hunted for a piece of paper, you probably realize that you wasted a few minutes of your day searching. But chances are that you’re not completely aware of the amount of time wasted in the corporate world just because of paper pile-up.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year retrieving misplaced information from messy desks and files. For an executive earning $75,000 a year, that translates to a loss of $9,221 - 12.3 percent of total earnings. For a company with one hundred executives at that salary, it translates to nearly $1 million in lost productivity!

Another distressing statistic is that the average time to retrieve and re-file a paper document is 10 minutes. Out of those files, an average of 3 percent are lost or misfiled and must be recovered at the alarming cost of $120 per document.

With this in mind, it’s not surprising that the American Demographic Society estimates that North Americans as a whole waste more than nine million hours per day just looking for lost and misplaced documents. This amounts to a total national loss of nearly $150 million per day!

To bring it home to your own corporation, Forbes ASAP estimates that the typical executive today wastes 150 hours a year, almost one full month, searching for lost information. For someone earning $50,000 a year, that translates to a loss of $3,842. That’s enough to take a long vacation!

Next time you find yourself searching for a piece of paper, ask yourself what you could accomplish if you had an extra 150 hours a year. Chances are, your productivity would soar through the roof and your level of stress would be greatly reduced.


About the Author

Sherry Borsheim, owner of Simply Productive, has been helping people to work smarter, not harder for years. She specializes in resolving paper, time and information management issues. To learn more about eliminating the paper pile-up and in vastly improving your productively, contact Simply Productive at 604-233-7076.