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Stick to it
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Offbeat Post bills and stickers at spots where your eyes reach frequently and see how things fall into place, prods G.B.S.N.P. Varma
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Photo: Sandeep Saxena
Motivating factors Small things can inspire us to achieve big goals in life
Long ago a businessman made lot of money. Before his last moments, he gave his son a box and asked him to open it before his (the son’s) final moments. The son too struck gold. Everything was fine for a long while. But as fate would have it, he
started losing and finally became a pauper. He contemplated suicide and reached a bridge. He then remembered the box his father had given him. He opened the box containing a yellowing brittle slip of paper, with words: “ This Too Will Pass” written in his father’s beautiful handwriting. With that wisdom, his misery vanished instantly and he was a different man.
The post-it notes with messages refocus us in a sea of drift and forgetfulness. The message can be a piece of distilled wisdom of a lifetime, or a snap of prose that rises to the occasion or a snatch of a poem that sweetens the moment, or a symbol that invokes something that makes you are who you are.
Omnipresent
Taped to monitors and CPUs, stuck on walls and fridges, encased in frames and holders, the words speak in friendly voices, cheerleading us to the goal, lifting us out of bouts of despair, putting us through paces. They are triggers to action, a call to arms.
“It’s about reminding yourself of what you want to achieve with your work,” says designer Ramesh K., who has a billboard stuck on the wall behind his computer, ‘Simple and Stark.’ “As soon as I lift my head, the message beams,” he adds, “now every idea I get will work out simple and stark.”
Among the posters of actors and actresses and WWF hunks in his stuffy room, Sridhar, an engineering grad, cello taped a message: ‘Finish the assignments.’ Despite the call to arms, finishing assignments is a pretty long shot for him. “Looking at it drives off laziness and brings back focus.”
Driving force
They keep one on the ball, prodding one to achievable action without spreading oneself too thin over too many projects. Rajan C, who doesn’t want to lose himself in the maze of the past and in the haze of the future, says: “Yeah, I am a man of the moment.” His mottoes change in tune with the workload and so do the posts. His present motto, specific in clarity and detail, says, ‘Finish the report on prices by weekend’.
Dinesh M., a guy with a great interest in ad making, sticks large colourful cards containing words and pictures on walls of his room. When he comes into the room or lies down on his bed. “I just keep looking at the storyboards,” he says adding: “I feel associated with different images and words.” A different combination may emerge, a leap of thinking may occur, you never know.
These cool reminders also act as veritable memory devices. Mounika, a post graduation student in botany sticks lists of hard-to-remember scientific names in her study. Glancing at them now and then, “gives me a painless way of remembering.” She feels, “it has improved her recall,” both in discussions and exams. “The post is an extra brain, really.”
In helter-skelter wash of events and experiences, circumstances and responses, demands and responsibilities, the post-it notes bring a kind of order.
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