The predictions of a paperless society have been around for decades. In 1966 Harvard Business Review came up with the phrase “paperless clearing hourse.” As the electronic age took hold, Business Week ran an article in 1975 called “The Office of the Future” which surmised that most of our record processing would be done through technology by 1990.

More and more during the 1990s you heard references to the paperless society. When I began working directly with companies on productivity in 2000, a major focus of my consulting and time management training was on managing paper. I still reiterate that, if you do not have control of your paper, you will never be a good time manager.

The question becomes, “When will paper not be a factor?” It certainly wasn’t happening in the 1990’s or the first few years of this millenium. All of the statistics relating to paper showed increased printing as technology gave us the opportunity to make multiple copies easily. We ended up printing a lot of our email and internet research. Add to that the fact that we simply like paper. It is easier to read, easier to compare multiple documents, and we can make notes on it.

Yet perhaps there is finally a shift in sight. For the first time we are seeing a decrease in paper usage as opposed to the past steady increase. One explanation is that now 47% of the current U.S. workforce started working after computers were in offices. More people are becoming comfortable with electronic documents and no longer feel the need to retain a hard copy (or copies) just in case…However I do not think file cabinet manufacturers are going out of business any time soon.