Paperwork, Paperwork and more Paperwork!!

The thing with paperwork is that it will be the death of me, my fatal character flaw, the cause of my downfall if I were a tragic hero. I think people who can do administrative paperwork efficiently deserve to feel proud because they have been blessed with infinite meticulousness, of which I do not possess. Recently I have been laden with the burden of administrative work for applying to schools, applying for overseas studies, applying for medical checkups … and doing something you hate so much ends up teaching you something, as it did for me. For example, I now realise that schools and hospitals might have more paperwork stored in their buildings than students or patients there. This is a topic that is boring and infinitely mundane, hence I’m throwing in all these amazing photos that my friend, Anqi, took a while back to provide a relief from the chore of paperwork.

There is no need to waste my breath explaining why paperwork is such a dreaded task. As children we never deal with paperwork and can frolic without the yoke of forms and bureaucracy, and so everything happens behind the scenes to make sure we end up in the right schools, have the right medical attention, all without requiring much from us. Now, I am suddenly an adult who has to take responsibility for myself and sign my own things. I can’t help but think that in all those superhero films the children love the superheroes, in all their simple-minded costume-wearing crime-fighting glamour, whereas the adults probably appreciate the “incompetent cops” more than children because they understand the pain of the administrative bog and empathise with why they would get so grouchy over the hero’s recklessness in breaking things in the city (urghh more paperwork to file for damage report). I don’t think it will be the same if we saw Captain American hunched over his desk formatting forms and submitting VISA applications to go to other countries.

So now, as an adult, I am suffering from having to fill out my own paperwork, but it has also taught me about the meticulousness that comes with responsibility. If you don’t care enough to sit down and patiently read all the fine print and make a decision about your life, no one else owes it to you to do it on your behalf. If I really cared to go overseas to study, hard work does not only look like studying hard or writing well, but includes taking care of my own information and getting applications submitted on time.

It sucks to have to do tedious things and sometimes I will bemoan the amount of administrative records that has come to be associate with bureaucratic inefficiency. Why not make it digital? Why not automatically transfer data from my existing organisation into a new application? Why bother to record down all the details? On the receiving end of paperwork, it seems painfully unecessary. However, as an Instructor working in the office I have also been on the other side that has to collect these information. I have started to understand the need for so much documentation — it creates a database that keeps people on the grid, where the administration can monitor and provide help accordingly. It is those who fall through the cracks, or did not submit their own information, who tend to suffer from lacking support or understanding for their personal circumstances. In order to manage large groups of people, paperwork facilitates administration and keeps tabs on everyone across time.

The first most important thing I am realising is that truthfully, the filling of papers isn’t the hardest part, it’s only tedious. It’s the CCing and BCCing to different people and constant probing that puts a lot of the onus on us to look for information. People who do not answer emails within a week are now my new pet peeve, because it bottlenecks the rest of the process and leaves you feeling helpless. For first time adults learning how to tackle the huge amount of paperwork, learn that Emails are your best friend. Learn to turn the notification on, and for goodness sake clear all the 2496 unread emails sitting in your mailbox because that way the notifications matter when they come in and you don’t miss important updates. Turn on Nudges that reminds you to follow up on sent mail so even if they get ignored you take ownership for yourself and keep pestering them for a reply. Increase your “undo send” window to the max so that if you regret your email, or you forgot to attach an attachment even though you said “attached below is ….”, you can undo it and pretend it did not happen.

More importantly, realise that all those Email writing exams they made us do primary school and in Chinese composition writing in secondary school are unhelpful. Sometimes I feel like I have to earn their attention in order for them to reply to my Email and a cookie-cutter format you use for exams don’t cut it. We need to send emails with more personality and more tact. Be polite and concise no matter this is the nth time you have sent them a one sided message. This is my shortcoming, but try to get better at writing and replying Emails fast for anyone who has first started adulting.

Sometimes, when I am waiting out for a reply to fill up a form, I am suddenly arrested by this feeling of apathy and I am tempted to just call it a day and leave it be. I am learning is to resist it and see through the task to the end no matter how tedious it gets. Administrative taskings should be measured by the end goals rather than processes (for example, I must get my medical records, rather than I must send an email asking for it). Timings will snowball if you do things one at a time and don’t press for information. I wish I did not just leave the end goals to another day as I am now paying the price for my previous procrastination in the waiting game — the other party requires more time to respond, and things don’t just run on my schedule whenever I feel like it. My motivation will forever disappear and I will not get back to it.

Case in point is having to set up my university IT account. It takes 500 steps (I exaggerate) to get your email created, get your phone number synced and enable two-step verification. Not to mention the requirements for passwords were insane and no matter what I chose the passwords do not qualify (you can’t have any words that appear in a dictionary!) It took me a solid 20 minutes trying to come up with a password, and by the end of it I was ready to just call it a day and leave my other IT stuff for another day. Too much resistance. But I knew that if I did not get it set up that day I would completely forget about this matter, and completely forget about that weird password I have set, and then I would have to go through the hassle of “forget my password” and resetting it. I wish I had avoided being lazy and kept being on the ball for other aspects of paperwork submissions.

This brings me to the next point about overcoming inertia. The very first step of sitting down and starting that email, or reading that document, is the hardest thing to do. I always procrastinate. So I usually give myself a hard timing: by 1100 I am going to stop what I am doing and go attend to XX particular issue. However, sometimes I miss that timing by a few minutes and I just think to myself: you know what, it’s already past the timing and I am going to push it back by one more hour. Stop this cycle and get started by creating tangible stimulus: setting an alarm on my phone so that the loud blaring jolts me into action. Find ways to get started, as with almost everything else in life, and I think the paperwork will seem a lot less daunting.

Patience is also a virtue that can be trained to acquire. Eliminate things that will get yourself frustrated or impatient to end it quickly. For example, go for a toilet break so that you’re not constantly holding back the urge to finish up quick and then go relief yourself, or have a proper meal, or some snacks, so that you’re not only looking forward to lunchtime to call it a day.

I’m still in the midst of learning to sort out adult mess, and I suspect I might be still doing terribly at it. However, this is part and parcel of growing up that is highly unglamorous and we don’t talk about. All those coming-of-age stories always talk about the emotional maturation and skillsets we acquire stepping into adulthood, but we forget, or choose to neglect because it is such a terrible subject matter to write about, the incoming administrative mess we have to learn to sort through for ourselves. Eventually we all will have to inherit the burden that our parents or schools have taken on for us all these while.

I used to get annoyed by those older generation people I see at Meet-The-People sessions who seem to refuse to learn how to apply for things themselves and need a volunteer to walk them through simple things. That’s not very empathetic of me, I’ll admit, because now I can see the resistance to learning how to sort through paperwork yourself. However, those types of people aren’t exactly who I want to model after, so learning how to sort through my own paperwork is a necessary skill I have stop giving myself excuses to put off getting better at it.

In summary, the few lessons I have learnt from having to deal with paperwork is:

1. Emails are your best friend.
2. Never leave things for another day, you will not come back to it.
3. Overcoming initial inertia is the hardest.
4. Patience is a virtue that I do not have, but everyone must learn.
   

It might seem excessive to write so much about such a menial and boring topic, but to me this is a turning point where I resolve to make up for the flaws in my personality rather than dismiss my incompetence at handling paperwork as “just one of my fatal flaws”. Hope that despite the grossly mundane topic, my friend’s photography has occupied what’s left of people’s attention.