I wanted to share this little life-hack about how the way you pull a sticky note ¹ off a stack affects the quality of its adherence and its duration. To make the sticky note stick better, pull the note off the stack almost tangential to the plane of all the notes, straight along the direction of the text. If you’re having trouble picturing it, read on and the rest of this article will clarify as well as go into detail about why this works.

A bent towards evil

Most of us are in the habit of pulling the Post-It note off the stack vertically, the way one might rip the date off a calendar to literally sieze the day. Unfortunately, this simple motion is enough to introduce a persistent curve into the fresh paper, causing the fibres to want to roll upwards. Paper fibres are quite stiff, which in this case is a bad thing. Once they’ve been curved, they want to remain curved, just like the waxed ends of the moustache of your local neighbourhood craft beer juggler.

The curving force pulling the paper away from the wall is focused onto and resisted by just a thin line of the adhesive. When this line fails, the next line of adhesive behind that is put under strain, until it gives up as well. This rolling motion exposes and isolates the adhesive, defeating its adhesion. This continues until the force trying to curve your sticky note is acting over too small an area to pull any more adhesive.

By this time, the size of the sticky strip still in contact with the wall has shrunk significantly. If it’s already not too thin to support the weight of the note, all it needs is for a gust of breeze, or change in the temperature or humidity to weaken it further, and then the note carrying your brilliant strategy slips off the wall.

Some people have the habit of curling the sticky note from side to side. This also introduces a curve into the paper, with the same results.

Pop it like it’s hot

The goal then, is to keep the sticky note as flat as possible during the process of removal. I’ve found that if you grasp the note at the lower edge and pull it sharply downwards, not away, it will “pop” off the stack. The pop is caused by you defeating all the adhesion in the back of your note at once. You’ll know you’ve done it right because the note will come away nearly flat.

Here is a picture of 3 notes each pulled off with a different method, for comparison.

Stick to it

That’s all I had for this post. Go forth with this knowledge and be slightly more sticky in all your endeavours!