In This Chapter

Even with the dramatic rise and popularity of the Internet and e-mail, when we talk about information deluge, paper remains as a major culprit. In the United States, we have the lowest postal rates in the world, which contributes to a huge direct mail industry. We also have the highest amount of paper-generating equipment per capita, and more fax machines, laser printers, personal computers, and personal copiers. We nearly paper each other into oblivion.

Increasingly, the sheer volume of paper that we all face is, in and of itself, an impediment to productivity as well as to staying organized.

When my daughter had just entered high school, I attended parents’ night. Going from class to class, as she does during the day, I met each of her teachers. In the first class, the science teacher handed us a syllabus, a reading list, a list of rules and regulations, another page with his website and homework for the next several months, and other sheets related to the class. Before I left, I had seven sheets in all.

In the next class, I received another eight or nine sheets. Thereafter, the teachers gave me seven to nine sheets per class. I left that evening with 50 sheets of paper, when receiving maybe two or three had been my expectation.

When I arrived home, I said to my daughter, “Look at this! I attended parents’ night for freshmen and ended up with 50 pieces of paper! Here, you take these. I’ve already been to high school. I graduated. I can prove it.”

How about your workplace? Despite the cyberworld or, as some say, because of it, a preponderance of paper plagues each of us.

A stifling array of government laws and regulations hampers business, allowing the United States to support 70 percent of the world’s lawyers, says Barry Howard Minkin in EconoQuake. It is crucial for you, a mere pawn in the game of rules and regulations, policies and procedures, to keep your own systems as uncomplicated as possible. It won’t be easy; there is a pervasive tendency among organizations and individuals to over-complicate things. You can see its effects every time you have to fill out some new form at work.

Are such forms getting any easier to fill out each year, despite many organizations’ long-term commitment to streamlining information, or are they becoming more difficult and involved? Have you bought any office equipment recently? Are there more forms, or fewer? Some companies have double the number of approval and reporting forms that they had 10 years ago.

If you’re an entrepreneur, or if you supervise others, think about the last time you tried to fire someone. Is it getting harder or easier from the standpoint of completing paperwork?

Examine the forms you’ve created in your organization, department, or venture, and re-examine them. What can be eliminated? Here are some immediate potential benefits you might experience from combining two or more forms into one or eliminating a single form:

You’re not the only one who’ll benefit from the reduction or elimination of forms. Here’s what you’ll be doing for the people who used to have to fill them out.

Finally, there are benefits for the people who used to have to process the forms:

Any way the wind the blows, when you successfully reduce or eliminate forms multiple benefits accrue.

Any way you cut it, handling paper is still numero uno when it comes to becoming and remaining organized. Your organizing mission, and there is no choice but to accept it, is to persevere in the quest to stay in control of the paper that comes your way.

Be cautious in deciding what you do and do not want to file away. Don’t pitch everything coming in, but recognize that problems begin when you allow even one unnecessary piece of paper to enter your office. Every unneeded page helps derail your ability to stay organized.

Each day, fight to keep your desk clear. In the evening, after you’ve cleared your desk, acknowledge yourself for what you accomplished that day. As you learned in Chapter 6, if you keep the spaces of your life clear, especially flat spaces like the tops of your desk and filing cabinet and the corners and windowsills around the room, control of your time and control of your life tends to follow.

Sometimes the piles of paper and documents all around us that thwart our ability to remain organized arrive by our own invitation! I was phoned one afternoon by a marketing representative from a well-established investment company. With such calls, after a couple lines of their spiel I find a polite way to quickly end the conversation. This particular caller seemed to be different, so I listened a bit longer. He discussed his company’s various investment options. He offered to send a brochure that listed the 35 different investment vehicles available, plus his company’s annual report, and a prospectus.

“Wait a moment,” I said. “I have no interest in reading about 35 different investment options. Please, do us both a favor by confining your information to a single page. You know, a paragraph or so on the three best options you think would be right for me.” I told him I wasn’t going to read his firm’s annual report, so there was no reason to send it. If I liked what he sent me on the single page, I could always request the annual report at another time.

I explained further that while I have an MBA and have earned the certified management consultant (CMC) designation, “I’m not fond of reading prospectuses, so please don’t send that either.”

As our conversation drew to a close I repeated to him that I only wanted to see a single page with the three investments he thought were best for me. If he wanted to send one other slim brochure that contained data about his company’s latest financial standing, that would be okay. Seemingly he agreed to send only those two items.

Several days passed, and I forgot about the call. In Monday’s mail, I noticed a thick package from his investment firm. Uh-oh. I opened it and saw everything I had asked him not to send. I took the assemblage and with one flick of my wrists, sought to tear it in half, but it was too thick. I quickly tossed it, and you may rest assured that I did not become a client.

Never volunteer to be inundated. If that agent had sent me what I asked for, who knows, I might have made his day.

People make excuses at work all the time about why they are overloaded with paper. Someone else is forcing them to receive more periodicals and subscriptions than they can handle or is forcing them to put their names on more mailing lists. No one is doing this to you—you are doing it to yourself.

Curiously, the more information we attempt to consume, the more we seek to acquire. We are like information switchboards, marveling at how much we can keep our fingers on. To ensure there’s never a dull moment, we open up yet another piece of junk mail or we look at yet another non-essential bulletin.

Accumulations, by their nature, steal your time. First you receive them, then place them somewhere, look at them, move them, arrange them, perhaps file some items and discard others, move things yet again, and then put up your hands and fall into despair.

How would your career proceed if you merged and purged on a regular basis, as these items came across your desk? You’d likely have more time and ultimately get more done.

In the course of a workday, week, month, and year, you encounter memos, reports, newspapers, newsletters, faxes, bulletins, magazines, calendars, promotional items, and all manner of sundries. Right now you’re hanging on to too much paper and that is slowing you down on your path to getting things done.

Grasp the information that impacts your career, stay on top of that, and have the strength to leave the rest behind. Not to suggest that you ignore things willy-nilly, but make conscious choices about where to give your time and attention. Most of what competes for your attention needs to be ignored.

To stay organized and get things done, I advocate that you can take in even less paper and less information than you’re currently doing. Actively choose where you will give your time and attention.

If you’re concerned that you’ll miss some vital piece of information, fear not. The redundancy in our information channels, be they publications, the Internet, key newsletters, or your organization’s intranet, increases the probability that you won’t miss some major development that merits your attention. If you use e-mail effectively, you can quickly establish a peer group of cyber associates that trade and share information with one another on a regular, if not on an ad-hoc, basis.

At work when you receive a magazine or other periodical, even one that you actually want, do you need the whole magazine? Continually strip down magazines to the basic elements relevant to you. Usually you can pull out the few articles that matter, and recycle the rest. Develop the habit of streamlining the information you receive, regardless of how big and thick the item. You can probably peruse a 250-page book in ten to fifteen minutes, picking out the eight or ten key pages.

When confronted by a large packet of information I swiftly break it down to the few pages that appear most useful. I use the edge of a ruler to deftly and neatly extract only the bits of information from each page that I need, then quickly assemble such tidbits on the copier and create a one- or two-sheet composite of what might have been many, many more pages. This affords quicker review in the future, keeps my files leaner and more targeted, and is anxiety-reducing.

If it helps, buy a paper puncher for a three-ring notebook and group like materials in one- to two-inch binders. Particularly in areas where you are collecting information in periodic fashion, assembling a notebook can be more practical than accumulating files in a filing cabinet or contributing to multiple piles.

After you’ve collected information in a notebook for a while, you can rearrange it and introduce sub-dividers for easier use.

Straightening up your desk, handling paper, re-arranging files, answering mail, and updating your lists help in feeling and being in control. Then, like clockwork, more “attention grabbers” will arrive. E-mail requests appear and require effort. Mail arrives presenting at least an item or two worth your attention. A critical fax comes through. The phone rings. Suddenly, that newfound sense of order seems to evaporate.

Increasingly, each of us encounters waves of “attention grabbers” throughout the day that render our sense of order and control futile. Yet, there are some simple ways to stay in control in spite of the obstacles.

As piles on your desk mount up, the task of dealing with them soon becomes overwhelming, at least mentally. “How am I going to deal with that information?” When you keep them to a minimum, they seem manageable. Perception is an important tool. When you believe you’re on top, you tend to act accordingly. It’s not merely positive thinking—a chain reaction occurs, and it works.

Remember: to help stay organized, reduce voluminous materials to the slimmest, most potent file folders or packets that still retain the essence of what you need to have for the task or project at hand.

To quickly and adroitly handle much of the correspondence and paperwork that crosses your desk, particularly if you do not work for a large organization that has formal structures, think “speed reply.”

Too much time goes into re-reading what you receive, composing a letter in response, proofing it, and printing or sending it through fax machines. When a response doesn’t require formal business protocol, there are many ways to handle it quickly.

When you receive a letter that merits a reply, if you already know the other party or it’s not essential to maintain professional protocol, write your reply at the bottom of the letter or on the reverse side, make a photocopy and mail or fax it back immediately. I often write “speed reply” and the date, quickly jot down a note, put my initials and then send it back within a matter of minutes.

You can clip the return address label when it is provided on the envelope. Then use that clipping as the label to send something back to them. Not many people find this objectionable. Of course, don’t do this for first-time contacts or official business. However, you’ll have a sense of when you can; for example, personal correspondence with people with whom you have had long-term relationships, who know you well, or who see you often.

You can buy a rubber stamper that says, “speed reply”—I have a big red one. I use the stamp on the letters I receive, handwrite my response on that actual letter, and fax it back to them, or copy the letter and mail it. Then the letter is off my desk, and I have a written record of our correspondence.

Create a fax label or stamper that includes your name, address, phone, and fax. When many people send me messages, the first page reads, “Fax message coming through”—unimportant information that no one needs. You can create a label, one inch by three inches, that has everything that anyone needs to know in terms of the first transmission page, “Fax reply to so and so, from so and so, here’s my phone and fax.” Then your message should only take half a page or less.

It’s a wonderful morning when you open up your mailbox and see only six pieces of mail, instead of 18 pieces of mail and 12 of them junk. Develop a standard letter, sticker, or stamper that you mail back to the other party saying, “Please take me off your list.”

The myth of “handling each piece of paper once” and others like it must give way to the reality that most pieces of paper should never cross your desk at all.

A vital part of reducing correspondence and paperwork is to get your name off the junk mail rolls. Write to the DMA or register online at www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html and ask to have your name removed from their lists. This will reduce your junk mail by 40 percent for about the next six months, after which time write them another letter requesting the same thing.

Mail Preference Service
Attn: Dept: 16433070
Direct Marketing Association
PO Box 282
Carmel, NY 10512

It is helpful to actually schedule time to peruse the material you’ve retained, in a quiet place away from phone, fax, and e-mail. Your concentration powers will be at their best. You’ll be able to zip through the folder at a much quicker pace than if you attempt to do so on the fly. As you review the items, pare them down further.

Instead of a two-page article, perhaps you need only one key paragraph. Instead of a flyer or brochure listing some offer, maybe you only need the toll-free 800 number or URL. Simply log in the important information on a palm top, note pad, or pocket dictator and then chuck all the pages. Hence, you are lighter, freer, and able to handle whatever else comes into your work area. In a single file or two, you have the essence of what you need or want to pursue.

In the course of your year and career, when are the best times to merge and purge what you’ve retained? Here are some suggestions:

When is a good time to get back in control? The answer is almost anytime—whenever the spirit moves you is an opportune time to merge and purge. You don’t need to wait for any of the above. Begin to sense the power inherent in regaining control of your files, your possessions, and your career.

The Least You Need to Know