Ever tell yourself, “I’ll file this later” and then later never comes?
Yep.
That’s how you end up with stacks of paperwork (or a messy downloads folder).
The One-Touch Rule fixes that.
What is the One-Touch Rule?
The idea is simple: When a document lands in your hands (physically or digitally), you have three choices:
✅ Act (Reply, Sign, Approve, etc.)
✅ File (Drop it in OneDrive or SharePoint)
✅ Delete (If it’s junk, get rid of it immediately!)
NO leaving it for later. If you touch it, deal with it.
Story: A business consultant had a bad habit of printing out documents and leaving them in a “To Do” pile on her desk.
Weeks later, she’d have to spend hours sorting through it all.
Once she committed to the One-Touch Rule, she cut her daily paperwork time by 60%.
Step 1: Set Up Your One-Touch Digital Workflow
If you’re moving toward a paperless system, your workflow should be quick and painless.
Here’s how to make it happen:
Emails: Use Outlook Rules to auto-sort important emails into folders. Set up Quick Steps to file, forward, or mark as complete in one click.
Scanned Documents: Use Microsoft Lens to scan straight to the correct OneDrive folder—no more cluttered desktops.
Contracts & Forms: Set up an e-signature solution (Adobe Sign or DocuSign) so you never have to print-sign-scan again.
Invoices & Receipts: Automate storage by using Power Automate to drop attachments into categorized OneDrive folders.
Example: An accountant used to manually drag and drop every client receipt into folders. After setting up Power Automate, it all happened automatically based on email subject lines.
Step 2: Build the Habit—Turn One-Touch Into Second Nature
Let’s be real: Old habits die hard.
If you’ve been stockpiling paperwork for years, switching to One-Touch Mode takes practice.
Here are some quick ways to make it stick:
Use Reminders – Set a daily 5-minute timer to clear out digital or physical paperwork.
Declutter Regularly – Once a week, check if anything has piled up.
Make it Easy – Keep the most used folders and shortcuts pinned in OneDrive.
Reward Yourself – If you keep up with the habit for a month, treat yourself. (Maybe with fewer coffee stains on that stack of papers!)
Story: A sales rep used to lose contracts in his email. We built a habit system where he spent five minutes at the end of each day clearing and filing. Within a month, he was saving two hours a week.
Step 3: Automate as Much as Possible
Want to make One-Touch even easier? Automate it.
Here’s how:
- Power Automate → Auto-sort email attachments into folders.
- SharePoint Metadata Tags → No more searching through deep folder structures.
- OneDrive Quick Access → Pin important folders to find them instantly.
- Microsoft To-Do → Instead of leaving documents to “deal with later,” set quick tasks with deadlines.
Example: A project manager hated filing weekly reports. After automating the process using Power Automate + SharePoint, reports went straight into the right folders, without lifting a finger.
Final Thoughts: Small Changes = Big Time Savings
Paperwork piles up because we tell ourselves we’ll get to it later. But with the One-Touch Rule, you eliminate clutter, save time, and never lose an important document again.
Try it for a week and see how much time you get back.
