Buried in Stickies

Jen Maney -- School Library Journal, 5/6/2009

My desk was littered with little scraps of paper with notes reminding me of the things I needed to do. I sometimes lost these little reminders, or even forgot about them, because they got buried under other piles and scraps. More important things ended up on sticky notes. But these could also be lost by falling off or getting covered by their fellow reminders. Those little scraps and notes were my to-do list and were crucial to my everyday survival. How could I keep from losing them?

Then I remembered Stickies, a tool I used at a former job. Stickies are little virtual sticky notes that stay on your desktop. You can stick one up there and leave it there, or set one to act as a reminder for looming due dates. If something really must not be forgotten, you can set the sticky note to stay on 'top' - that is, on your screen at all times, an ever-present reminder of your must-do obligation.

Stickies are customizable by color. So if I get tired of the plain old yellow, I can right click and make them bright blue. If I want to change the typeface to a larger, more urgent font, I can do so, and, in this manner, yell from my desktop at myself about the really important things I need to do. While my desk might not be clutter-free, at least I can’t lose my virtual scraps of paper, my to-do list, or my survival guide. The only problem with Stickies is that they don’t work on Macs. But from what I understand, Macs already have their own sticky notes program—so it’s just us poor Windows users that need Stickies.