You don’t need a holiday to get clarity

Summer is here (the weather doesn’t know it but move on). Exams are done and children have been released from their weekday detention centres (school). Those free of the confines of education may already have been away on holiday whilst (hopefully) the remainder are excited for one to come. But why is the taking and enjoyment of a holiday relevant when problem solving or just simply trying to see the wood for the trees?

There is a point to this.

▶ How many times have you solved a problem that has bugged you for days whilst showering in the morning?

▶ Who has woken at 03:00, desperate to be asleep once more, only for your brain to offer solutions from your day?

▶ Tell me you have never been caught with the most amazing idea or concept whilst chilling next to a pool? (Of course with nothing to capture that brilliance - just a book, sunglasses, towel and a pair of speedos that would make your mother blush!)

I have countless shower eureka moments, 03:00 song compositions (arranged the greatest songs in my ‘awake’ state only to have forgotten by the morning) and holiday clarity moments to share (no I do not wear “budgie smugglers”!). 

Why?

I am no psychologist but I look at the pattern in myself and see that when I am unoccupied by the regularity of life, the mundane jobs and the constant distractions, the creativity and solution finding happens. I am sure it cannot be that simple (does anyone with a psychology degree care to comment?) but my experience shows a pattern. Do you see a similar pattern? I have spoken to one or two others who certainly agree there is some truth in what I experience.

Ask yourself:

▶ Do you regularly find yourself unable to finalise or offer a solution to clients in an acceptable time frame because everything else gets in the way?

▶ Do you often rely on others to complete research or do complex thinking when trying to move forward with business because you are already exceeding your hours?

▶ Are you regularly distracted and pulled from working on larger projects / issues to complete a ‘tick box exercise’ so something or someone else can move forward?

By removing mundane, repeatable (yet no less important) tasks from our days, it allows us, as humans, the space to get creative, deep dive into technical scenarios and spend more time attending to client needs or ‘blue sky’ about the future.

Going on holiday is a rather extreme way of removing that daily clutter! Therefore the ideal solution is to create that space within the work environment (without the need for table tennis tables, slides, a free bar and a panic room!) that impacts everyday.

By utilising business process automation tools in a Document Management System (DMS), you can reliably take control of the mundane tasks that eat into employee time everyday, improving efficiency, compliance, security and client satisfaction.

▶  Reduce the time it takes to process document requests (such as invoicing) 

▶  Reduce the number and length of human interactions (touchpoints) in processes

▶  Reduce the time taken to simply store and locate documents

▶  Reduce the overhead of managing document data for records and compliance

▶  Reduce the incidence of lost documents and reproducing work

▶  Improve the ability to quickly share and access information from anywhere at anytime

In removing the daily clutter, you can create that space for your mind to ‘breathe’ and allow progress to happen - planning, creating, solving - every working day, not just on a 2 week holiday in Bognor.

As mentioned in a recent LinkedIn article, all the small things add up to create a much greater burden (invoice approvals, document searches, compliance governance etc) and many of these can be handled more efficiently with automation. You only need to look at the lifecycle of a document in isolation to understand how manual processing can be so detrimental to an organisation as the numbers start to scale up.

So if you would rather be able to solve issues whilst still at work and not dedicate your shower, sleep or holiday time to them, why not talk to PacSol about how a Document Management System (or improvements to an existing DMS) can help declutter your day.

Toby Gilbertson, Director. July 2024