Must have Whiteboard for your desk

I do not write reviews for any product that often. But once in a while I do run into some products that do deserve some attention.

I have been working from home for more than 2 years now. I spend lot of time in meetings or technical discussions with clients as well as co-workers. During those meetings I need to take notes or jot down some action items. Those are the times when I find myself scrambling to find notebook, stickies, pen etc. Even if I have them with me, later on I need to put those action items or TODOs on my bigger whiteboard so I can action them. From my personal experience, I have found the following to happen with my notes.

• I will get busy with some other tasks and will forget to create my TODO list. Well, that translates into either forgetting about the tasks or acing late on those tasks
• Misplace the notebook where I wrote the items

Even when I have items on my big whiteboard, I loose track of TODOs because the board is not in front of me. One can argue that why can't I put the items in some application like Outlook Tasks or similar application by other vendors. Well, then I am back to square one. First I will have to write down those items during the meeting and then create my task list in some application. But there are certain action items that need immediate action. E.g. during the meeting, the action item is "send email to Joe with certain information right after this meeting". If meeting lasts longer then there is a good chance, I am going to forget about it. But, If I had written this action item on some thing that is placed right in front of me, then I am more than likely to do it right after the meeting because I am going to looking at it after the meeting.

Whiteboard on your desk

Yes, this is what I had been wanting. A whiteboard right in front of me on the desk. I ran into a product called The Slope by Fluidstance that provides me exactly what I needed.

The Slope™ Personal Desktop Whiteboard

It's a very simple idea of putting a Whiteboard on your desk. It is a very neat idea of utilizing the space between your keyboard and the monitor on your desk. Following is picture of my personal use of this product.

As you can see, I have my TODO list sitting right in front me. It always reminds me of what my action items are for the day or upcoming action items. Not only that, I use the whiteboard to note down important information during phone calls or meetings. Now I don't have to look around for paper or pen when somebody is telling me some phone number or address or important information like that. I quickly scribble it on the whiteboard.

I keep pens of two colors on the Slope, Black and Red. I use Red pen for items that need immediate attention. You can use more than two colors if you want to designate more colors for different priorities. The key idea is that you have your information right in front of you on your desk where you spend good part of the work day.

It is not a very expensive item. It is only $59. It is made of steel and very solid and sturdy. There is another version of this product that ships with phone charger. I would not bother with that product. Depending on your monitor and keyboard setup, the phone charger may block view of your monitor. So not really worth the money. The simple Slope is all that you will need.