clipped from www.actionmethod.com

Instead of having an escapist travelogue photo as the desktop pattern, I've found it useful over the years to create background images that show discreet "hot" to "cold" areas. This way, before getting involved in any one task, you can arrange files of active projects according to priority and urgency, and move items along the line towards completion and archiving.  A nice side-effect of this is that your desktop becomes a snapshot your work-world...where the multitude of your action-items are accessible at-a-glance.  Nothing falls under the radar. Many people intuitively arrange files on their desktop according to some organizing principle, but the potential of visually-delineating action-type "zones" on the desktop is a simple, basic, customization that often goes unexplored.