Creating a Paper Flow System

Getting Organized Column
BackStage, February 2006
topic: creating a paper flow system

Paper View
By Kristine Oller

After a long day, you finally arrive home. Your arms and bags are loaded down with magazines and scripts, scraps of paper with important names and numbers, notes from acting class, and the mail, clenched between your teeth. To avoid collapsing, you unload everything onto the nearest flat surface and drag yourself to bed. Waking up the next morning, you are greeted by yesterday’s pile. What now?

Every actor has days when he or she is on the go from sunup to way past sundown. When life is hectic, dumping your stuff into a pile is an understandable action. However, problems arise when one day’s pile is plopped onto another day’s pile and that giant pile starts to spawn auxiliary piles. You don’t want to be frantically excavating audition sides from a mountain of paper minutes before heading out to a callback.

To keep this constant influx of paper under control, you need a basic system in place, one that guides your papers from unsorted—a.k.a. “freshly dumped”—to stored.

Dumping It

To start, select a lidless container to be your “dumping bin.” This bin can be a beautiful basket or a cardboard box, but it should be about 5–7 inches deep and big enough to accommodate a three-ring binder.

Next, choose a specific place for this bin to live: a spot that is as close as possible to where you habitually dump your stuff. If you are someone like me, who comes through the door and plops everything on the dining table—even though the office is mere steps away—then place the bin on, under, or very near that table. Dumping your papers, mail, and notebooks into one designated bin provides you with a visual cue for action; when the bin is full, it is time to sort. Of course, you don’t have to wait until it is full. Tending to these unsorted papers is something you can do whenever you have a few minutes to spare.

Sorting It

In addition to the dumping bin, you’ll need at least six containers in which to sort the dumped paper: one each for “career to-dos,” “personal to-dos,” “unpaid bills,” “to be filed,” and “to be shredded”; the sixth should be a trash can. Each container should have a specific, convenient place to live in your home office area.

“Career to-dos” holds papers related to your acting career. “Personal to-dos” holds papers not related to your acting career. These two containers should hold only those papers you need to take action on: calls to make, letters to write, data to enter, and the like. Once the action has been completed, move the paper to the “to be filed,” the “to be shredded,” or the trash container.

Even after taking action on a to-do item, that item might remain “active” or unresolved—maybe you had to leave a message or your order has not yet arrived. In that case, write “pending” on a Post-it, attach it to the paper, and return the paper to its to-do container.

Within the scope of your career or personal life, there may be several major or long-term activities constantly generating to-dos, such as involvement in a class, organization, or play. Personalize your sorting system. Perhaps for you it would be helpful to divide your career to-dos into containers labeled “career: general to-dos,” “career: data entry to-dos,” and “career: class to-dos.”

Put the “unpaid bills” container in an eye-catching place where it can’t be overlooked. “To be filed” is where to toss papers that are ready to be put into your file cabinet or other storage system. “To be shredded” is for paperwork that should be destroyed.

Though you can use stacking trays or file folders to sort your papers, I find that the L-shaped containers designed to hold magazines on bookcases work very well. They keep papers upright and visible in an easy-to-flip-through way and allow each category to be individually portable. They are available at Ikea, Staples, or Target, among other places, in varieties to suit any budget or style.

Working It

Systems work, but they do not do the work. It is up to you to regularly take your papers from the general dumping bin and distribute them among the individual sorting containers. The containers are there to provide places for papers to sit temporarily until you get around to dealing with them; they are not for permanent storage. You must continue to execute the to-dos and complete the cycle by ultimately filing, shredding, or trashing your paperwork.

Unsorted piles seem daunting when the papers have nowhere to go to. Having an organized system to process your paperwork is vital because those papers represent possibilities and opportunities for you to expand your professional activity; if they remain stagnant, then part of you, your creativity, and your career will, too.

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