Richard Farrar’s Blog

Photo by apjpix

Our desire for the illusive paperless office has been around for many years. So, are we any closer to achieving this seemingly impossible dream with recent technological advances, or are we still consigned to emptying the shredder and waste bins every other day?

The concept of the paperless office is certainly nothing new. In 1975, Business Week published an article on “The Office of the Future”. Much of what was predicated in that article has since come true, thanks largely to the release of the now ubiquitous IBM PC in 1981.

However, since the release of the aforementioned PC, rather than decreasing, paper usage in offices doubled in the following 20 years, eventually stabilising around the millennium; hardly a success for the supposed paperless office!

According to the Economist however, since 2001 office paper usage has actually decreased. So, it looks like we’ve finally turned the corner in our paper consumption, but does this mean that we’re close to realising the dream of the paperless office, or do we still have a way to go?

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New  internet technologies and social media websites seem to be springing up at an almost exponential rate. With these ever expanding ways to communicate and stay in touch, how do you decide which to adopt and which to ignore? Which will stand the test of time and which will be destined to obscurity by the time your morning coffee’s gone cold?

Social media, new media, web 2.0; whatever you choose to call it, there are now so many ways of keeping in contact with friends and family and keeping up to date with the latest news and events, that you could spend all day doing just this and not achieving anything productive.

So how do you choose which of the latest new media offerings to adopt, and which are the ones that are likely to stand the test of time and become mainstream?

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I’ll find a photo later…

Procrastination gets a lot of bad press. It’s generally seen as a negative trait, as we’re constantly told not to procrastinate and made to feel guilty if we do. However, as with most things in life, things aren’t always that black and white. Perhaps there are positives to procrastination.

Should we really listen to those bearded psychologist types who like to wear ladies’ underwear; the sort who constantly try to make us feel guilty about procrastination? We all do it, so being made to feel bad about it isn’t going to help matters.

Why don’t we try to see the positive side to procrastination instead? After all, the glass is half full isn’t it, not half empty?

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Photo by ppdigital

Most of us make fundamental decisions in life based on trying to achieve a single fixed goal, but if you’re prepared to look a little further unexpected benefits can often be found.

Any decision or choice you make in life is likely to have direct and indirect consequences. In making your decision your are going to weigh up the pros and and cons of the obvious and predictable consequences. However, there will always be something you hadn’t thought of, that with a little work or change of attitude, may be turned to your benefit.

These secondary or tangential benefits are not necessarily be monetary and may present themselves in various guises that aren’t immediately obvious. Some you will need to seek out, others are already there, but perhaps you just didn’t see them as such.

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The first time you meet someone new one of their opening questions is likely to be “What do you do?” The answer to which is only ever expected to be singular.

Why, in such a supposedly enlightened and forward thinking society, is it assumed that we can only do or excel at a single thing? Isn’t this limiting our natural potential by conditioning everybody to think they can only be good at one thing?

Based on your answer to the above question, you are likely to be stereotyped and pigeon holed by your newly met acquaintance, and will probably have to work very hard to convince them otherwise of your multifaceted personality.

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