The 25 Hour Day

I woke up a few minutes late this morning. Traffic pushed back the start of my day a little more. I am facing a few deadlines at the office. My house is never as clean as I would like it to be. I don't get as much gym time as I would like. My dog doesn't get walked enough. I definitely don't get enough fun/relaxation time. I'm not complaining. I wouldn't trade my life for anything. I just wish I had a little more time each day.

Well, it looks like I'm not alone. Some women in Canada are campaigning for the day to be lengthened to 25 hours. It seems that the body's natural clock, or circadian rhythm, is more than 24 hours. A study in 1999 put it at 24 hours and 11 minutes. In other words, if you go to sleep at 11:00 pm on Sunday and wake up at 7:00 am on Monday, your body would naturally want to go to bed a little later than 11:00 pm on Monday and wake up at 7:11 am on Tuesday, and so on.

It sounds like a great idea to me, but it begs the larger question, where would we spend our extra hour? Would we spend it at the office or would we spend it on our lives outside the office, as the movement intends? People in India were the only respondents to say that they would spend that extra hour in the office. I suspect that Americans would do a little of each. Some of the time would be spent in the office, some of it outside the office.

Businesses might love this idea as much as anyone. The recession has forced employees to be stretched to their limit. Many priorities have shifted from the big picture to "We've got to pick our battles". In the records management industry, we see that 'pick our battles' philosophy every single day. For most of our customers, their records management program isn't really broken, so why fix it? There are better ways for their employees to spend their time than on document management.

The truth is, an inefficient document management system can be a tremendous drain on both time and money. On average, it costs $20 to file a document. It costs $120 to find a misplaced document. This doesn't even take into account the fact that employees are being taken away from other duties. An electronic document management system or even an efficiently administered paper records management system costs a fraction of that and allows your employees to focus on the things that really need to be done.



Give GRM Document Management a call. We'll show you how you can add time and money to your business day.