Right-Click-Save-As Syndrome
The Symptom: The combination of poor naming convention, traditional file sharing and digital hoarding is weakening our collective ability to focus on the work that matters.
The Magnitude: One patient we studied, an ecologist engaged in several collaborative projects, spends over 4.5 business days a year doing the following:
The Promising Practice:
The Examples:
Below you will see examples of actual email attachments. I've removed any attribution that might reveal the author and/or their organization for privacy considerations; this exercise is not meant to be embarrassing. In fact, my colleagues and I struggle with this on a on going basis. However, we are constantly looking at our habits to improve the way we share, communicate and get high quality work done.
The Magnitude: One patient we studied, an ecologist engaged in several collaborative projects, spends over 4.5 business days a year doing the following:
- He receives an email with an attachment
- He downloads the file, then right-click-and-saves in his project folder, using his naming convention
- He makes his own edits, the uses a new naming convention reflecting his habits
- He then returns to his email application, uploads the new version, then hits 'send'
- The collaborator then reciprocates the right-click-and-saves in her project folder
- This process can repeat itself up to 8 times
The Promising Practice:
- Design Principles - Keep names simple and clean & design documentation that can be easily shared
- Once-And-Done - Use collaborative tools that minimizes the number of emails and clicks
- Delete with Prejudice - Delete old files with prejudice
The Examples:
Below you will see examples of actual email attachments. I've removed any attribution that might reveal the author and/or their organization for privacy considerations; this exercise is not meant to be embarrassing. In fact, my colleagues and I struggle with this on a on going basis. However, we are constantly looking at our habits to improve the way we share, communicate and get high quality work done.
