Paper, paper, paper. People are drowning in paper. From coupons, newsletters and sticky notes to receipts, client records and pads of paper with copious notes. And the problem is not easing up.
In fact, did you know the average executive spends 6 weeks a year looking for paperwork? The average woman spends 76 hours throughout her lifetime searching for items in her purse.
Society did not adequately prepare people to keep up with the ever increasing demand of managing paperwork. So the ability to stay on top of it goes to those rare few who have sought out the skills on how to manage paperwork efficiently and those that are just naturally gifted at being organized. The rest are just barely keeping their heads above water and are left exhausted at the end of the day without feeling as though they got a whole lot done.
What is the solution? A new time management system ? Pretty colored coded folders? The government to step in and tell everyone it’s ok to throw all their paperwork away?
Well, the first two would help and the last well, that’s just a pipe dream but the real answer starts inside. Inside your brain that is. That’s right. Your belief system is one of the biggest culprits to disorganization.
What your thoughts are telling you is what is leading to your procrastination, rebellious tendencies, perfectionism, depression, fear, etc. which leads to the paper monster you encounter every day.
This article is not going in depth on the psychology of clutter behavior, but awareness that disorganization is mostly an internal issue creates the starting point for you to get control of your paper woes.
But since I can’t lay you down on the couch to tap into your psyche how about I give you some simple solutions to show your paperwork whose boss.
Here are some things to know when it comes to paperwork:
Your paperwork falls into three categories. To remember these categories remember my RAD strategy ™. Divide your paperwork into:
R – eference (same as to be filed)
A – ction (papers that require action like bills due or docs to be signed)
D – iscard (papers that need to be discarded, recycled or shredded
Once you have divided your papers into one of these three categories then:
1 st – Put all the papers that need to be filed into a to be filed bin or file them away in their designated homes.
2nd – Put all action oriented documents into the Action Hub ™ (see below)
3rd – Discard, recycle or shred the rest
By applying this strategy, my clients typically find that only about 25% of the papers that are on their desk are actual action items. This instantly creates a drop in stress levels which will increase focus and productivity.
For those action oriented documents, I recommend to set up an Action Hub™ and get a portable file box and hanging file folders to divide your papers into the actions you need to take for example calls, bills due and pending items.
Back up those to do’s that come from your action documents on some sort of external to do list like your iPhone or a excel table. Otherwise, your Action Hub ™ will become another pile of paper, only a vertical one. Also remember, once the action has been completed go back to RAD strategy ™ to move the paper to it’s next destination.
Setting up your reference system
For those documents that don’t require any action but simply need to be filed away, I recommend to create the main categories that are broad to start and then can get more specific. Examples of broad categories are:
- Financial
- Lifestyle
- House
- Kids
- Taxes
- Business
Once you have divided your papers into broad categories then you can sub-divide within those categories for instance:
- Financial – Banking and credit cards
- House – Maintenance and repairs
- Taxes – 2012, 2011
- and so forth
The challenge with any filing system no matter how organized it is, is remembering what category you put something under. A registration can be filed under car or automotive. A credit card statement can be filed under taxes, Capital One or credit cards. The point is, most filing systems require remembering. And that is just simply not efficient.
To alleviate this problem, I recommend using a document management system like Paper Tiger. Paper Tiger allows you to find your document in 5 seconds or less guaranteed. It works using key words that you associate with that document.
Plus, it has a built in purging feature that notifies you when it’s time to purge a document. A great benefit because most filing systems wind up bursting at the seams with old documents that are no longer needed.
By having a system in place to manage your reference and action related documents, paper piles will no longer overwhelm your desk, interfere with your productivity and cause stress levels that make you wish 9a starting time was 5pm quitting time every day.