Business Card Battles and Other Paper Quandaries

Before presenting a corporate personal productivity workshop, I prepare by conducting an on-site assessment and inviting employees to tell me what they want covered. Read on for answers to two questions recently asked; I know these are issues with which many of you struggle.

I have a question regarding business cards. When you're not doing business with company or person how long should I keep them?

Great question!

Most people have hidden piles of business cards they don't know what to do with.

If you enter the data into an electronic address book like Outlook or Act, throw the card away as soon as it is entered. However, I think your question has more to do with the decision of whether you'll ever need to contact the person on the card again. If never, throw the card away. If unsure, ask yourself how hard it would be to find the contact info on the person if you didn't have the card - would someone else you know have the info, would you remember enough info to look them up in the phone book or find them with a google search? If so, then throw the card away.

The balance is always how likely you will need the info again combined with how much time it would take to find the info later versus the time to file/enter the info now.

And I don't mind if this helps you decide to throw my card away.

Is electronic better than hard copies if what you have is always backed up?

Since 50% of what we keep is a duplicate of something we already have, it definitely reduces our paper load to keep the electronic file and discard the paper copy.

There are some electronic files which a visual person may find easier to read on paper than on a computer screen. In that case, it makes sense to print out the data and keep the paper copy until you are no longer working with it.

Generally, as long as there is a backup, there is no necessity to keep a paper copy of short-term data. For the calendar and address book in my computer, the back-up is my Palm PDA. My Word and Excel files are backed up on an external hard drive. If you have a personal hard drive and also can save your data to the company server, you have a backup. Of course, a virus that gets through the company firewall could destroy both copies, just like a fire or other disaster can destroy all copies that are stored in the same building. For entrepreneurs, small businesses, and individuals, a web-based storage system such as @Backup.com or the one GoDaddy.com offers can be an economical off-site back-up solution.

That being said, paper copies have a longer life than electronic copies. For one thing, information burned on a CD will degrade – in about 30 years, so you might not care, but it is not a permanent form of storage. Also, just think of electronic storage options that are now obsolete, like floppy disks and zip drives. The information may still be on the storage media, but you can't read it unless you have access to a floppy disk drive or zip drive. I predict the same will occur with CD's, as DVD's become more popular. In the short term, no problem, but if you think you (or someone else) may need the info five years from now, a consideration.