89: How to Get Through Paperwork FASTER!

The FASTER Method for Tackling Paperwork

Paperwork is a genuinely hard struggle for me too, so this isn’t coming from someone who’s mastered a beautiful filing system. What I have found, though, is a method that takes a completely unrelated, overwhelming mountain of paper and sorts it into categories you can actually work with, a real starting point before you ever get to more polished advice from naturally organized experts.

Step one: gather everything into one place

Grab an empty box or laundry basket and walk through the whole house collecting every stray pile of paper you find. Don’t sort as you go, don’t separate mail from school papers from random lists, just get it all into one container. Having it all in a single spot already feels less overwhelming than scattered piles everywhere.

The FASTER acronym

Once it’s all together, bring it somewhere you can work, a cleared table or an uninterrupted stretch of floor, and label six sticky notes: F, A, S, T, E, R. This is a rapid-fire exercise, not a thinking exercise, so put on some music and move quickly.

F is for file

This pile should stay small. It’s for things you genuinely need to reference later, tax documents, medical records, important manuals. Be cautious here, plenty of things you assume you need to file can actually be found online instead.

A is for action

Anything requiring a response from you, invitations, appointments to schedule, cards to send. This pile tends to be revealing, you’ll likely discover items you meant to act on that have since expired and now belong in the trash instead. That’s not a personal failing, sometimes procrastination quietly turns a “yes” you felt obligated to give into an honest “no.”

S is for sentimental

If it feels sentimental, it goes here, full stop. Don’t stop to decide how to preserve it or whose decision it ultimately is. That’s a phase-two problem. Right now, just move it out of the main pile.

T is for trash

This covers trash, recycling, and shredding all at once. If you’re already sorting into a pile, go ahead and separate it into the right bin on the spot and save yourself a second pass later.

E is for evaluate further

This is the category that got added after the original three-letter version stopped working. Some things arrive as a bundled stack, a notebook full of unrelated notes, a stapled set of mixed papers, that you don’t have the bandwidth to sort item by item in this rapid-fire moment. Give yourself permission to set the whole bundle aside for a closer look later, rather than letting it stall your momentum now. Just watch that this pile doesn’t quietly become the whole pile.

R is for refer to someone else

Some paper isn’t actually yours to decide on, it belongs to a spouse, a kid, or needs to go to a neighbor. This category exists so you’re not stuck wondering whether something belongs in action when really it just needs to be handed off.

Putting it into practice

Set a fifteen-minute timer and move through the pile making fast, low-effort decisions: file, action, sentimental, trash, evaluate further, or refer to someone else. Get up, move around for a minute, then set another fifteen-minute timer and keep going. By the time you reach the bottom of the basket, the trash and recycling can go straight out, the refer-out pile can get handed off, and the sentimental pile can go into a labeled storage box if you’re not ready to deal with it yet. What’s left, a small file stack and an action pile, is manageable and clear instead of an undifferentiated, paralyzing mound.

Your practical, actionable step

Gather every loose paper pile in your house into one basket, label six sticky notes for file, action, sentimental, trash, evaluate further, and refer to someone else, and set a fifteen-minute timer to sort as fast as you can without overthinking any single piece.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.