They won’t kill you, it’s too much paperwork

On our honeymoon, my wife and I hired a local tour guide to show us around the city for a day.

Prague was a new destination for us, so we relied on a native to help us make the most out of our trip.

One memorable moment during the tour happened when the three of us stood at a busy intersection. I pressed the button on the pedestrian crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn. When it looked safe to go, I started walking.

But out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a taxi barreling down the avenue in our direction. My heart stopped and I jumped backed to the curb.

Our tour guide said, don’t worry, they won’t kill you, it’s too much paperwork.

Wow, that’s reassuring. I like the fact that what prevents this person from committing murder isn’t the fact that it’s illegal, immoral or deplorable, but that there’s too much administrative overhead.

Over a decade later, that moment still sticks with me. Not because it was a near miss in heavy traffic where my life could have ended tragically, but because it reminds me of humanity’s general distaste for paperwork. The inconvenience and hassle of filling out forms is a legitimate deterrent for people to do certain things.

Even with incredible advances in modern digital documentation, the burden of dealing with paperwork is one that humans still haven’t learned to cope with. We have zero patience for bureaucratic obligations.

These processes are almost always time consuming, tedious and burdensome. And don’t even get me started on the papercuts. If a situation has even the smallest chance of leading to additional administrative tasks, we want no part of it.

Nothing squeezes people’s chests, constricts their breathing and clouds their mind like filling out forms.

Think about it. How often have you put off doing something important for months or even years, simply to avoid doing the paperwork?

Formaphobia is a very real obstacle to the execution of necessary tasks in this life. It literally changes people’s decision making process. Paperwork is the bane of many people’s existence, and becomes a factor to consider when evaluating risks and taking actions.

Personally, my irrational fear with filling out any kind of forms is around my lack of detail orientation. I fear I will overlook some minor detail, check the wrong box, fuck it all up and end up in debt for thousands.

Every day we encounter stunning displays of bureaucratic aversion. Our stomachs churn at the mere thought of filling out forms or dealing with administrative tasks, and that anxiety gets the best of us.

But the answer is not better digital technology. I’ve applied for hundreds of positions at companies that made these very products. Their software simplified and streamlined the paperwork process with online forms, electronic signatures and other automated systems. Their friendly interfaces and intuitive platforms made filling out forms a more positive experience.

And yet, the real issue with these solutions is that they doesn’t ratchet up our collective emotional regulation skills. Better forms might save time, but don’t make us more resilient. Smarter tablets streamline the process, but that doesn’t teach anyone how to move forward in the face of fear and disgust.

Look, I’m all for simplicity and reducing labor intensity, but at the same time, making everything too easy is troubling for society. We need gravity and resistance and pushback so as not to atrophy our abilities.

My mentor used to say, if you give people a crutch they don’t need, they develop a limp they shouldn’t have.

Truth is, most people don’t have an aversion to paperwork, they have an aversion to their own difficult feelings. They don’t fear filling out forms, they fear their sense competency being undone by a single mistake. It’s not about the paper, it’s about their sense of being a good person being erased by a moment of angry reactivity.

The reality each of us must face is, filling out forms plays an important role in various contexts of life. It’s a clerical means to an end, not an unnecessary burden.

Sure, it’s tedious and exhausting and makes our eyes hurt, but we need to shift the focus from the process itself to its potential positive outcomes.