Every lost piece of paper costs a business $120.
Imagine that.
In fact, 15 percent of all paper handled in businesses is lost, according to the Delphi Group, a Boston consultancy group, and 30 percent of all employees’ time is spent trying to find lost documents.
Please. Spend no more time or money. You can come and look in my cubicle for free. Your lost paper is probably here – somewhere.
Messy desks, messy computers, messy calendars are messing up the economy, if what the consultants say is true. (Or maybe they are just trying to sell document-management software, file folders, and paper clips. Even so, people are buying.)
In 2000, consultants for the Connecticut-based Gartner Group – the same folks who reported the lost-paper cost – estimated that, by 2003, the average professional would waste 30 percent to 40 percent of his time on “document-related non-value-added tasks,” i.e., paper shuffling. Now some of that wasted time has moved from paper to electronics, with the volume of e-mail projected to rise 30 percent a year through 2008.
Let’s figure that the average professional makes at least $1,000 a week – that’s 15,600 to 20,800 wasted dollars per year per worker. Keep on multiplying. A company with 100 professionals could lose more than $1.5 million a year.
Canadian analysts calculated in 2002 that poorly managed information was costing the Canadian government $870 million a year in wasted time.
And in America, consultants found we’re no better at managing our time. Professionals lose 2.1 hours of productivity a day to “unimportant interruptions and distractions.” That’s $588 billion a year, according to Basex Inc., a research and consulting group in New York.
Personal cost
But from a personal perspective, it’s even worse. Disorganization on the job makes people stressed, according to another study, from the office supply company Esselte Ltd., and office stress sends out ripples of difficulties:
You growl at your husband, snap at the children, bark at the dog. No one likes you. You can’t sleep. You eat too much or too little. You are moody, irritable, likely to make misteaks. You quit your job or get fired. If not, you worry about it, and you can’t concentrate.
There’s hell to pay for a messy desk.
There are piles on my desk, on my floor, and in the center of my 8-by-8-foot cubicle, where I rest my paper-filled crate of shame/good intentions.
I have an overflowing bookshelf, plus three knee-high stacks on the floor. I have eight full file drawers, which I rarely open. My e-mail in-box has 4,044 items, 870 unread. And there’s a parallel situation at home.
These messes stress and depress me. I need help.
World of the organized
So on behalf of the messy masses, I’m going to explore the world of the organized – which, believe me, is more complex than I had realized.
It includes, for example, Ikon Office Solutions Inc., a document-management company in Malvern that has $4.4 billion in annual sales; an association of professional organizers comprising 3,700 neatniks; and an Internet cult figure known as the FlyLady, who preaches organizational salvation in the form of a shining sink.
Many people are unorganized, and those who aren’t, well, they can’t all be liars.
David Lewis, a British business psychologist who has made a career of mess, stress and information overload, agrees.
“I think you can be immensely depressed by the piles of work,” said Lewis, who analyzed a survey of 2,544 office workers in the United States and several European countries for his client Esselte, which owns Pendaflex, the hanging-file company.
Three out of four workers surveyed worldwide agreed with this statement: “I find myself becoming more stressed when everything is a mess and I can’t find important documents when needed.” Americans were the most distressed.
Breaking the cycle
Forty-three percent of the 504 Americans surveyed described themselves as disorganized, and 21 percent have missed crucial work deadlines. Nearly half say disorganization causes them to work late at least two to three times a week.
Lewis said: “I’ve gone into offices where they’ve had piles and piles on their desk, and they say: “Don’t touch anything. I can find it.’
“They may be able to put their hands on that invoice, but they are using a huge amount of their memory to keep track of where everything is,” he added. “That is brain power which they could use for another purpose.”
Every January, people like me resolve that this year they are going to get organized. (Maybe they lost weight last year!) A survey from Adecco Staffing, of Switzerland, found that the number two 2006 New Year’s workplace resolution – right after getting a raise – was to be more productive.
“If I am more productive, I’ll get a raise or a promotion,” explained Lori Hock, vice president of Adecco’s Northeast division. “If I am more efficient, I’ll have a better family-life balance.”
With downsizing so prevalent, everyone must accomplish more. Little room is left for inefficient practices, experts said.
Yet local business psychologist Ross DeSimone finds that, too often, “people look busy, but they are not getting anything done. There are things in our work lives that we feel less comfortable and confident about, so we mask these insecurities by being busy in areas that we do feel comfortable.”
Then there are people who are organized – they just don’t appear that way.
Brian Clapp, whose company sends consultants into the workplace, said that, unfortunately, “people’s perceptions matter in business and life. If you are perceived as being disorganized, if you can’t access information, if your work space is disheveled, it impacts how people see you.”
Disorganization can lead to a time crunch, said DeSimone, a principal at Corporate Psychological Resource Center in Royersford, Pa. “When people feel a time crunch, it can make them more brusque.” This behavior can annoy their coworkers, who may refuse to help them out of a jam.
Psychological drain
DeSimone laid out another pattern, which is a little closer to what I feel. “When people feel blue, they lose energy,” he said. “When they lose energy, they do less, and then they are down on themselves, and that’s a cycle.
“That cycle needs to be broken, somehow,” he said.
“The first thing they’ll do is clean their desk… . But that doesn’t change the behavior… . In fact, organizing is about creating priorities that make sense.”
If I knew how to do that, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It’s not the clutter that’s killing me. It’s what the piles represent.
I asked Bob, my boss, if he thinks I’m disorganized. “You always come off as fairly well organized,” he said, “until I see your desk.”
As for this project we’re about to begin, here are my motivations: Our paper may be sold. What if I lose my job? I better learn some of this technology stuff and fast. Get my contacts straightened out.
Also, I make myself nuts – too many stray phone numbers on scraps of paper, too many good ideas to prioritize. . . . Does it really take 30 to 40 percent of my time? I exhaust myself.
But most important is another point Lori Hock, the Adecco executive, makes. Productivity is pleasurable in its own right, and I yearn for that. I want to be efficient because I love my work, and I want to do this job using all the abilities I am lucky enough to have.
Oh, yeah, and I would like to see my family, too.
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