In 2010, standing at a gas station with a tech visionary I deeply respected, he asked me a question that seemed absurd at the time: “What if everything we know about documents is about to become obsolete?” I dismissed it then. Today, I realize he might have predicted one of the biggest shifts in how we work since the invention of the printing press.

Given I am now on the labor market for almost 20 years, I’ve witnessed firsthand how document-centric workflows create invisible barriers to innovation that most organizations don’t recognize until it’s too late. The revolution isn’t just coming—it’s already here, silently transforming how the most innovative companies operate.

Before I share how this shift might transform your work, here’s a quick assessment you can use today: Count how many traditional documents you’ve created in the past week versus information you’ve shared in collaborative platforms. This ratio might reveal more about your future readiness than any technology investment you’ve made.

The Moment of Realization

The catalyst for my realization came when one of my teams switched to Monday.com. Instead of creating marketing plans and campaign proposals in PowerPoint and Word, supplemented by Excel spreadsheets, we moved to a platform that became our single source of truth.

Last month, our team needed to update a critical strategy document. The Word file had been edited by seven people, contained four embedded spreadsheets, and linked to three separate presentation decks. When a key assumption changed, we spent three days just finding and updating all the affected sections across multiple files. With our new approach, the same change took 20 minutes and automatically notified everyone affected.

Yes, we still occasionally needed Word documents, but I noticed something interesting: the more we used Monday.com, the more those traditional documents became a limiting factor for our thinking and expression. When I create a proposal, I don’t want to be constrained to an A4 format, whether portrait or landscape. I want to incorporate Miro brainstorm diagrams or process flows that I can zoom in and out of.

But that’s impossible when you paste them as static images into a Word document. Any update requires returning to Miro, making changes, then copying and pasting the result back into Word. Keeping both in sync is a nightmare.

Key Shifts in Document Usage:

• Traditional documents create artificial constraints based on physical limitations
• Collaborative platforms enable real-time updates and notifications
• Static documents fragment information that should be connected
• The most innovative companies are already moving beyond document-centric workflows

The Declining Need for Physical Documents

Another development I’ve noticed is that I print less and less. Printing already feels excessive in a world with excellent digital reading solutions—e-readers that allow you to read comfortably in bed without straining your eyes, digital signing capabilities, screen sharing instead of overhead projectors, and collaborative editing tools.

Companies like Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon have already moved beyond traditional documents for their most critical work. Their engineering teams use dynamic, collaborative spaces that would be unrecognizable to professionals from just a decade ago—and they’re seeing 40% faster decision-making as a result.

I’ve increasingly found myself storing information in formats that don’t naturally fit on an A4 page. And when you think about it, why should they? A Word document or PowerPoint presentation is primarily a digital variant of centuries-old concepts. We digitized the format but didn’t reimagine what it could be in a truly digital environment.

This reminds me of early iOS designs, which meticulously mimicked physical objects—the skeuomorphic calendar that looked like leather, the notes app that resembled a yellow legal pad. Apple eventually abandoned this approach for designs that embraced digital possibilities rather than mimicking physical limitations. Yet with documents, we’re still stuck in that skeuomorphic phase.

The AI-First World Doesn’t Care About Your Formatting

We’re rapidly moving toward an AI-first world—a world powered by artificial intelligence where large language models (LLMs) and generative AI applications are central to how we work. And here’s the thing: AI doesn’t care if your document is formatted as a Word file. It only cares that the content is plain text, searchable, and indexable.

Imagine opening your workspace in the morning to find that overnight, an AI has analyzed customer feedback, updated your product roadmap, drafted communication points for stakeholders, and highlighted three decision points requiring human judgment—all presented in an interactive space where you can explore connections, run scenarios, and collaborate with colleagues in real-time. No documents to open, no files to search for, just information organized around your actual work rather than arbitrary page boundaries.

As we produce more content—whether written by ourselves or generated by AI tools—we’ll likely move further away from physically representing that content. Think about money as a parallel: physical coins and bills are simply representations of value. As we move toward fully digital currency, the visual representation becomes irrelevant—it’s just a number, a value.

The same applies to documents. When they exist purely in digital form, they no longer need to conform to the dimensions of an A4 sheet. Yes, visual design still matters for books, magazines, and certain publications, but for most of the documents we create daily—proposals, reports, analyses—the physical format becomes an unnecessary constraint.

In a digital environment where searchability and indexability are paramount, the need for documents to resemble their physical counterparts disappears. We’re free to create content that takes advantage of what digital truly offers: dynamic elements, non-linear structures, embedded interactive components, and real-time updates.

Key AI-Driven Changes:

• AI prioritizes content over formatting
• Searchability and interconnection matter more than presentation
• Information becomes fluid rather than static
• Value shifts from document creation to insight generation

The Hidden Cost of Document Dependence

While we cling to familiar Word documents and PowerPoint decks, a silent productivity gap is widening. Organizations that have embraced post-document workflows report 37% faster decision-making and 42% higher employee satisfaction. As AI continues to transform knowledge work, this gap will only accelerate—potentially creating winner-take-all dynamics in industries where information flow determines competitive advantage.

Organizations clinging to document-centric workflows aren’t just maintaining the status quo—they’re actively falling behind. The competitive advantage of post-document workflows is creating a widening gap that will become increasingly difficult to close with each passing year.

The Pioneers of Post-Document Tools

I was recently triggered by a blog from Information Architects, the creators of IA Writer and IA Presenter—two applications I deeply appreciate. Their writing application, IA Writer, can format text to resemble a physical document, but it primarily creates plain digital documents using markdown language.

Other tools are pushing in this direction as well. Notion and Coda have reimagined what a document can be, breaking free from the A4 paradigm. Knowledge management tools like Obsidian and Roam Research prioritize connections between information over traditional document formatting. Technical documentation has largely moved to plain text formats with version control on platforms like GitHub and GitLab.

We’re increasingly leaning on flat text rather than beautifully formatted documents. Why? Because we no longer need to print them, and because they’re more effective for searching and processing with AI applications.

The Future of Traditional Document Software

This shift makes me believe that document producers—printer manufacturers and sellers—will face even greater challenges in the coming years than they already do. We’ll simply print fewer documents.

More controversially, I believe that applications like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Apple’s Pages, and Keynote may have seen their peak. Microsoft has profited tremendously from Office for decades, but they’ll need to reinvent the Office 365 stack to introduce a next phase. I believe they’re already working on this, though they face the challenge of a stubborn core user base resistant to change.

But change is inevitable. Just as Figma disrupted Adobe’s dominance by creating a truly web-native design tool rather than just digitizing traditional design processes, new tools will emerge that reimagine what a “document” can be in a truly digital, AI-first world.

Beyond Documents: What’s Next?

So what does this post-document world look like? I envision collaborative spaces where information exists not as discrete files but as interconnected nodes of content. Where AI assistants help us navigate, create, and transform information without the constraints of page sizes or file formats.

Think about how B2B software applications like ERP and CRM systems are so powerful because they’re utilized company-wide, enabling collaboration toward greater goals. When information is stored in such systems, it allows colleagues to work together on a massive, structured canvas. A sales order entered in Country A updates an MRP calculation for Plant B and triggers a replenishment order for Warehouse C.

Now imagine achieving that same level of collaboration with AI-native content creation. We could work together on this canvas, alongside various AI assistants, each tailored to specific tasks. My AI-driven interactions would be visible to the larger team, enabling them to make better decisions and conduct deeper analyses.

That’s the future I see coming—one where the concept of a “document” as we’ve known it for centuries finally evolves into something more fluid, more connected, and more powerful.

The visionary at the gas station was right. There is something beyond the document. And I think we’re finally ready to discover what that is.

What You Can Do Today:

• ​1. Identify one document-heavy process in your organization that creates the most friction
• ​2. Experiment with a collaborative platform like Notion, Coda, or Monday.com for that specific process
• ​3. Measure the difference in time spent, quality of output, and team satisfaction
• ​4. Share your findings with decision-makers who can support broader transformation

The post-document future isn’t just coming—it’s already here for those willing to embrace it. The only question is whether you’ll be leading the change or scrambling to catch up.