Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by king_magic | Hacker News Reader

I work in an office where actual use of paper is very much in the minority. So much so that when someone actually hands me a piece of paper, my first thought is "well now what do I do with this thing? Isn't this on our (insert share mechanism here)?".

It just evolved to be that way, I don't know of any single decision point where we said nope, done with paper. Obviously won't work for every type of organization, but I'm quite happy not having to deal with physical paper. Feels very... quaint.. to have to do so - like staying at a B&B without, say, electricity, where you must churn your own butter.

Now all that said, there is one huge downside to this type of office - everyone looks at their laptops or tablets in meetings. People are constantly distracted. I haven't been in a meeting in months where everyone is focused (though I can't say that was true of paperful offices either). Is it better/worse? I don't know, but if I had to pick between the two, I'd pick no paper every time.

"everyone looks at their laptops or tablets in meetings."

Trust me when I say most of the people pretending to stare at old fashioned paper are spacing out, thinking about the weekend, shopping lists, daydreaming, etc.

Its not more distracted, its more honest. This is a prime opportunity to improve business procedures and make more money. If its possible to be honest that most meetings are a waste of time, abolish them.

I've spent a lot of time at primate dominance rituals, at slow verbal readings of a previously distributed email/powerpoint, at what amounts to a dramatic presentation with poor stagecraft that should have been done by distributing a professionally edited video, the worlds least efficient way to distribute work material, a very inefficient and expensive way to ensure boring forms are filled out (too beta/lazy to enforce your workers actually work? make them work in a conference room and call it a meeting). I've been to a couple real meetings in my life, mostly brainstorming sessions, but the rest have been a waste of time.

What we need is a meetingless office not a paperless office. Its trivial to waste $10000 worth of aggregate labor and travel budget for a meeting, but really hard to blow $10000 worth of paper in an hour unless you've got a printing press instead of a stereotypical laser printer.

| Its not more distracted, its more honest.

In my experience, it is more distracted. When someone is deep in the mental zone of authoring an email, or caught up in an IM chat, and I just need to ask them if they agree with a technical decision or not, they are definitely too distracted to be effective.

| Trust me when I say most of the people pretending to stare at old fashioned paper are spacing out, thinking about the weekend, shopping lists, daydreaming, etc.

Yes, that is definitely human nature - but it's far easier (IMO) to get someone's attention from a daydream than it is from a screen of blinking notifications.

| What we need is a meetingless office not a paperless office.

I disagree. There are times and places for meetings. Sure, frequent meetings are painful and need to be culled back, but there are just times that you need to sit down with real people and talk through something.

I know this sounds strange, but what about tablets instead? No keyboards, so people can't get too easily distracted. But something to view shared documents, etc.

tablets and smart phones usually are a lot more distracting. I infact find it annoying when i try to make a point and find someone fiddling with their gadgets, even though they probably are trying to find some facts for the conversation and are not generally yak shaving. But may be again its just me.

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