Getting Organized

Although academic leaders have looked to the promise of a “paperless office” for many years, that future vision never seems to materialize. While it’s true that many forms of communication that appeared in hard copy now reach us in electronic versions, we still seem to be inundated by a never-ending stream of paper documents?policies, memoranda, petitions, appeals, and announcements?that often seem too important to throw away but too numerous to occupy the limited real estate of our desks. As a result, even the neatest office of an academic leader can, in a depressingly short amount of time, end up filled with stacks of paper. A disorderly workplace is not only unsightly; it can actually make us less effective at our jobs, causing crucial information to become harder to find and making our thoughts as cluttered as our desktops.