Your Sticky Notes Are Not A Project Management Tool

     Look around your desk, your walls, everywhere in your office. There is likely to be a sticky note or loose note placed somewhere. 

However, I have seen throughout my career that to some, the sticky note is used for more than just the little things and has become the default for everything that must be remembered. They will use the humble sticky note to manage their every move, meeting, appointment, plan or idea, plastering them en masse across their workspaces. Surely we have all witnessed someone frantically looking for that loose note somewhere, with the only thing turning up being frustration. Perhaps they didn't lose the note but simply forgot about it and failed to meet a deadline. 

 If your sticky notes and loose notes are overwhelming you, that is a sign that you need to adopt better project management strategies. But what about your growing wall stickies in your office, how do you part with your old ways overnight? Old habits die hard, as the old adage goes. You may keep writing these little notes even as you make the effort to stop. Don't let that discourage you from working to make a positive change to your old management habits. The goal is to not immediately eliminate, but to minimize, organize and optimize your current notes into something more powerful for you or your team.

Here's how to get started. Your first step is to set up a Kanban board, a tool used in project management to provide structure to your tasks. I personally use Microsoft Planner, but there are plenty of alternatives that may fit your needs better. Explore and choose what makes sense for you.

Once you have selected a platform and created your blank slate Kanban board, you will now be able to create columns of different categories and assign tasks to each one. These columns are nothing more than a container/categorization to help you stay organized, the same way that you would keep different notebooks in school for different subjects. For example, I set my team up with a shared Kanban board to delegate work and provide insight on the status of projects using some of the following:

Projects - Current: 

Projects - Planned:

Troubleshooting - Ongoing:

Troubleshooting - Planned:

Brainstorm:

Now that you have created categories of your own or are using the ones I set up for my team, it's time to populate those categories with items. Grab those stickies and start entering them into the appropriate categories. A good strategy for some would be to make piles of your physical notes based off what is logical to you and then assign a name to those groups. If you have multiple notes that relate to the same project, set them in their own pile combine them into a single item on your Kanban board under a suitable category. 

Once your groups are created, start entering your data. As you are entering each item on the Kanban board, pay attention to all of the details your Kanban platform may support. For example, I am able to assign deadlines to tasks, create checklists, include attachments, assign team members and more. I assign deadlines to all items, and have my board set up to email reminders when upcoming deadlines approach or items are overdue. This is where a system like this can really pay off and add some value to your department or organization, as things will be less likely to get "lost in the weeds" of a disorganized batch of notes. 

All of that being said, I still use my sticky notes, but now I use significantly less and for fewer purposes. I'll never surrender using a note with bold letters on my monitor to remind me of something, just in case the alerts my Kanban board  or Outlook provides isn't enough.  

This is an essential project management tool for me and one that I wish I set up for myself when I first started my career, as it can reduce stress, increase output and make your work life and employees happier. 

I hope that it can serve you as well as it has served me and my teams.