Sticky Notes Are Good for One Thing

We’ve all seen it. The array of brightly colored squares decorating the sides of someone’s computer monitor or desk or cork-board or chair or car dashboard. It’s the sticky note graveyard.

In the beginning, people start out with good intentions. They make themselves a temporary note to call someone in five minutes - just as soon as they’re done with the project at hand. Or, it’s a reminder to themselves that they absolutely have to take care of sending that fax before the end of the day.

Occasionally, they’re used for things as dangerous as passwords or bank account numbers. As someone who is a recovering sticky note junky, I understand the pain. What begins as a quick response to capturing an idea from your head into an easily accessible place turns into a nightmare of disorganization.

In dealing with clients, I find that a little less than half have a dependency on sticky notes to keep track of various bits of information. As you’re reading this e-mail, I’m sure you can look around the room and see whether or not you fit into that category (or whether or not you can see someone in the office next to you who fits into that category).

The problem with using sticky notes for these ideas is that you are creating a bad habit. The habit is that whenever you get an idea you write it down and put it into the closest place at hand. But, the problem is, when you do that, you are multiplying gathering points. A gathering point is any place where you’re collecting to-do’s and the more gathering points you have, the more difficult your life becomes. For this reason, I tell all of my time camp clients this adage. The thing is, sticky notes are good for one thing and one thing only…

Making notes for someone else.

Sticky notes are a valuable tool in your personal systems arsenal, but only when they are used in the proper manner. The proper manner is when you are delegating a piece of physical information to someone else. For instance, let’s say that you have a budget that you want your co-worker to review and you have the budget in front of you. It is very inefficient to take that budget by hand into someone and to have a long conversation when all you need is clarification on a single number.

It is much better to take that much-abused sticky note out of your desk, place it onto the budget, and make a note. “Hey Bob, can you tell me what this number is about?” Then put the two together into Bob’s in-box.

This will help you avoid interrupting others in whatever it is that they’re doing. It gives them the opportunity to respond to something in their own time.

So, when the time comes for you to use a sticky note in an improper way, remember the saying: “Sticky notes are good for one thing and one thing only…making notes for someone else.”