I am returning to work from a two-week vacation, and upon checking my e-mail I discovered I’ve been assigned two new projects. This brings my total number of projects to…a lot. I have a very detailed system for managing multiple projects, involving a set of linked MS Project timelines, a time-tracking database, exhaustive project plans, daily goal-setting, etc., but it is still difficult to go from zero to sixty like that. Last night, I was feeling anxious about it, and I had a sudden desire to map everything out on a white board.

The computer presents an unlimited canvas for documentation, but there is something so comforting about a white board, with its defined space and colored markers. In every collaborative meeting I’ve ever attended, all the decisions were made after someone scrawled some arcane diagram on a white board, someone else reconnected a line or two, and everyone nodded their heads, after which another attendee was dispatched to photograph the gibberish with his cell phone for posterity. Unfortunately, most of the walls in my new office are pitched, limiting the locations for hanging to the bathroom, the hallway, or at knee-height behind my desk.

What I needed was a white board with its own stand, like an easel. Where could I get such a thing? Then I realized I had the perfect solution at hand:

When they write up our office renovation in Architectural Digest, there will be a note that says, “Office by Fisher-Price.”