Oh sure, I know I might rot in hell for calling 3M Post-it Notes sticky bits but they kind of are. The problem is that since their invention, they stick to themselves and other stuff, and all of us. Sometimes, they literally hold our lives together.
Herein lies the tragedy of convenience. Those little notes are by the phone and we write important information on them. At my house, I pile the opened mail over them. Pretty much every day I'll add another important note but because the pile of mail is more convenient... I'll forget sticky stuff and write on the mail. After more days a newspaper ad will join the fray. The phone will ring... it will be a change in a doctor appointment and out of necessity, I will write the appointment change on the first thing I see... the edge of the newspaper ad.
Then I'll have to go get coffee and check Facebook. After that I'll start a load of clothes in the washer and then I'll decide to make the bed. Heck, after you do that you might as well take a shower and get dressed... but only after you've watched The Price is Right. Doctor appointment? What appointment? Oh yes... it's right there on the calendar. Change of time? I vaguely remember something but I'll find it later because my friend just pulled in the driveway and we're going to visit.
Are you with me here? If so, you'll understand. Friends, we happily confuse ourselves. Those sticky notes we all thought would save our sanity have only made things worse. The bad part is that they come in so many different styles and types with promises of salvation to all of our organizational problems. If you are reading this you probably own at least one other sticky thing besides basic notes. I bought colored tabs so I could organize my files. Then I lost the sticky note with the instructions on which color tab meant what.
I remember the day my dental technician gave me a card with a stick bit on it which I could put on my calendar at home. I thought it was brilliant but it was too big for the little square on the calendar so I put it off to the side. Because I already had the appointment reminder, I didn't WRITE IT on the calendar. You can imagine the shock I felt when the office called to remind me of the appointment on the day before I hadn't written it on the calendar.
When I clean my desk off it's very time consuming because I have to check for sticky things stuck in places they shouldn't be and miscellaneous scribbled messages on assorted surfaces. Because of this, I took the entire pad of sticky notes (mine is compliments of goarmy.com) and just wrote things on it and left it out of range of the other stuff. Now this may sound good but what if you write something important on the third page and rip away the top two? What if you need a clean one and take off four important ones and try to paste them back on?
I don't know about your sticky bits but a lot of mine don't stick twice. You only get one stick and it better be good. Just this week I found a note on the floor that said, “Marina 9:45.” That note had started out on the computer a day earlier. This was a good one because it stuck to the bottom of my slipper... and I got to my meeting right on time.
Today my desk is clean. I'm beginning my new sticky life plan. My goarmy.com pad is in an out-facing position, protected by the printer from incoming debris. On top of that pad is a screaming green Rogue Credit Union pen. I have never been to this business but I like their pens. That's a whole other story.
Yes, I have a calendar and try to live each day by it but sometimes those sneaky, sticky notes get by it. The calendar is a mess. There are hair clips, clothes pins and file clips holding important stuff onto this calendar, as well as sticky bits. It is so bad that I put up an eraser board next to it. A few weeks ago I taped a wedding invitation over the eraser board.
