Steff.me

My day to day life can, at times, be a little bit hectic. There are a lot of things going on that I need to keep track of. There’s university work, personal projects, emails coming in and going out and really just general life stuff.

I tried using iCal to keep myself up to date on my “to-do” lists, however I just kept forgetting to open up iCal. I had to create a blank folder or document, put it on my desktop and name it “Check iCal”. Yeah, that didn’t work too well.

I’ve also tried other online to-do-list trackers, such as Tada List from 37signals and Remember the Milk among a few others. They don’t work for me either. Why? Sometimes I’ll forget to go to the websites, sometimes the UI is just a bit weird and I spend more time messing with it than using it and sometimes I just can’t be bothered to type something in as it feels permanent rather than just a quick note to myself.

I’ll just like to share with you, quickly, how I now keep track of my life…

Stickies.

Yep, stickies. I use them everywhere. I stick them to my desk to remind me to do something that I need to remember within the next hour or so, I stick them to my door if I need to remember something as I’m leaving the room and I stick them to my notebooks if it’s something that I’ll need while I’m up on the university campus. Oh, I’ll even stick them to my roommates door when I need to communicate with him and he’s not around (usually while he’s sleeping).

I don’t think my memory is that bad, I just keep myself overly active. I can’t sit in front of my computer and just do one thing; I have to have many things on the go at once or I’ll just get bored. The downside is that I’ll flick back and forth between so many things that I can’t seem to keep up with myself.

Sticky-notes suit all my needs and are absolutely amazing. When a new to-do comes in I’ll grab a pen, jot it down and stick it where it’s suited to me seeing it. This method seems to work perfect for me and I rarely seem to miss things. As I’m not a fan of mess, I’ll generally want to get rid of them (though, I’ll admit, it can look cool to have stickies stuck on the wall in funky patterns); it’s this mentality that forces me to get through my to-do’s and get things done.

How do you keep track of things in your life? Have you got a system that works for you? Let me know your system in the comments. I’m really interested in this as if there are better solutions that would suit me, I’d love to adopt one.