Those Riddlesome Moleskine Stickers

If you're like me, you collect those little stickers that come with each Moleskine book. They're labeled "Quality Control" and they combine two aspects: color and design. I haven't kept track of which sticker comes with which type of book, but I have an awful lot of the little gridded ones, in green, orange and yellow. I have one or two of the other designs.

Stickers are fun. Who would throw them away? But the thing is, I don't know what they're for. I held onto them in a little ceramic teacup until I could decide on their function.

The first instinct was to simply lay them out on a piece of paper, organized by design, to have a large one-page collection of them, but I felt they should have a better purpose. My second idea was to use them to seal the backs of envelopes, and that would be sufficient but I still felt there was a reason for them I didn't perceive. In the back of my mind, something nagged that they should go on the books themselves.

Required: Moleskine as Work Journal

Considering how much I love Moleskine, I thought I should delineate exactly what I use all mine for. I have a collection of notebooks that's dominating an entire bookshelf, and each book has specific functions, whether it's the regular notebook that always appears in every selection, the Volant, the Cahier, or all the other varieties and variations they produce.

I maintain a work journal, which I urgently request everyone try. The best and foremost reason for this is that you can record your triumphs and personal victories—as well as the details of any trouble in the office—to support/defend yourself around review time. When these annual reviews come down, you know you've done a great job but the particulars of your invaluable support may have slipped your mind unless you've written them down in a work journal.