Personal and work affairs have one unpleasant property: they accumulate. This leads to different consequences. For example, you may have one case that is suddenly interrupted by two more. What to do? Put off the first and take them? And if so, how in this case to go back and finish the first one?
Unfinished business accumulates and plunges our lives into chaos. It is very difficult to consistently complete all your tasks. We need a simple and effective system that will fix all the screws and allow you to unload the brain. For this, you may find it useful.
Kanban is a system for organizing production and supply, which allows you to implement the principle of "just in time". Personal kanban is a system for organizing your affairs, which allows you to complete them efficiently and on time. The best personal kanban is visual. With its help, you can easily and effectively deal with your tasks.
It is very similar to the system. It consists of containers (or columns) of to-do items in various stages of completion. You can classify different types of actions using color or different lines. Thus, it is possible to see tasks in their context.
There are two principles of personal kanban:
- Visualize your work.
- Limit your work in progress.
How can I do that? For visualization, write down all your actions on . You can then move them around the workflow diagram created on the board. You can also use stickers in different colors to visually represent different groups of activities.
The simplest kanban consists of three columns:
- To Do List (To Do)
- Things in progress (Doing)
- Done
More advanced options include more columns. Those who use them add special features that help them tackle large projects efficiently. We advise you to master simple kanban first, and then move on to more complex ones.
An extended personal kanban can include up to nine columns.
Goals
This column will help keep yours straight in front of you. At the same time, they are visual and physically tangible. What is not written does not exist. This rule works best for goals.
Projects
This column is for those projects that you need to come to or that you should not forget about. Keeping them in sight helps you get to them faster. When you're ready to start the project, you can "use the sliders", that is, move it in time.
Reserve cases
These are things that may become important at some point in your life. You can segment them by time and perform when there are free hours.
Training/improvement
Everything related to learning and improving life will be here. Here you can write down absolutely any ideas from this area. You can enter the title of books and courses so that you can come back to them when you have free time.
Done/pending/this week
This column is for cases that require attention this week. They must be in your mind. When these items are ripe for action, move them from the Backup Cases column right here.
Remember the second rule of personal kanban and limit your work. Strive to ensure that the number of elements in this column does not exceed 5-6 units. Large quantity cases can be morally overwhelming.
Today/action
These items require immediate attention. In your daily planning, look through the "Done" column (5) and select those that can be moved to this one. However, don't overload it. Limit the list to 3. This way you can focus without being distracted by a large number of tasks.
In progress
For the items you are currently working on. Their goal is to send it to column 9 ("Done") as quickly as possible.
Expectation
This column is for items that require another person's action (boss, client) before they can be moved to another location. Or these are things that require money or a certain amount of time.
Made
Column for completed actions. Enjoy the rush of excitement as you move into this column. These cases do not need to be deleted, save them. Perhaps someday this information will help you. For example, find out what area of your life you do most often or don’t do at all.
You can also analyze what unplanned things you have during the day.
- Where do they come from?
- How many hours a day do they take?
- What areas are they from?
As already mentioned, you can customize your personal kanban however you wish. But you can start using our template. Changes will be made as you go.
We wish you good luck!
Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing Rafal Morison, Ireland's leading personal productivity expert and author of an excellent blog called Creating Personal Flow. I enjoyed it a lot, Rafal's questions were very thoughtful and made me think about the answers, both from the point of view of a person who follows the philosophy of GTD, and a specialist who teaches this system to others. Below is the text of an interview published on Rafal's blog: "GTD and Kanban"
Today I am pleased to present to your attention an interview with Pascal Venier. We discussed combining two methods: David Allen's Getthing Things Done and Kanban.
Personally, I had a lot of fun doing interviews and preparing questions. I hope there will be more such discussions in the future.
Well, let's get started?
If you don't mind, tell us a little about yourself.
I am a personal productivity coach and instructor based in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada's main province. I am French and have been a university professor in the UK for over 20 years. I had the opportunity to work at the universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Salford. For the past 15 or so years, I have taken a serious interest in the subject of personal productivity. Last year, I realized my long-term ambition and opened my own practice offering coaching and personal productivity training. The fact that I live in Canada does not prevent me from offering services to those who wish from all over the world: I am a frequent visitor to the UK and France, and I also conduct coaching remotely via Skype. IN this moment I am finishing work on French translation Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry's Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life".
How long have you been practicing GTD and/or other productivity techniques?
I have been doing GTD for almost 9 years now. I discovered the book in the summer of 2004. It was no exaggeration a discovery. Unlike other time management techniques that I have tried in the past, this method not only helped me take control (or rather, take control) of my work processes and plan my next steps. Most importantly, he allowed me to be unusually flexible and ready to quickly adapt to any changes.
Which method do you use the most?
At the moment I am combining Getting Things Done and personal kanban. Everything is clear there, plus both methods are guided by the “movement” of tasks in certain categories. I call kanban the front end of my GTD system. GTD's workflow management system helps keep everything under control. The six-level work review model allows you to understand the time it takes to complete a task, which is not always as simple as it seems. Well, kanban helps not only to bring things to the end, but also teaches you to separate the wheat from the chaff.
What attracted you to the kanban system?
First of all, its extreme simplicity. There are only two rules here: visualize your work and limit current tasks. I'm a highly visual person, plus I use mind maps all the time, so I'm drawn to the way tasks are presented visually in the form of self-adhesive colored sheets. I also like the need to limit the number of tasks you are working on at the same time - it helps a lot in bringing all the tasks to their logical conclusion. Kanban provides that time component that you can rely on during a dialogue with colleagues or yourself.
How has Kanban increased your productivity?
It forces you to be more selective about what you want to do, teaches you to set the right priorities. Thanks to him, you don’t feel overwhelmed by the mass of cases, as it would be if you simply wrote out all your tasks in one long list. Still very important property Kanban is the ability to clearly see the volume of tasks that you have already completed. During a weekly review / analysis, you really see everything that you have achieved during this time - you really rise in your own eyes. From a psychological point of view, this is an extremely powerful motivator.
Has kanban taught you to concentrate better and work more efficiently on selected projects/tasks?
Yes, Kanban has definitely improved my ability to focus on the right things. The WIP (work in progress) constraint helps a lot in this regard. If you have a WIP limit, you must complete the current task before proceeding to the next one. The words “Finish start, start finish” should be the motto of all kanban users. You will not be able to handle the amount of work that you are physically unable to handle. As Jim Benson, Joanne Ho, and Maritz van den Heuvel wrote in "Beyond Agile, Tales of Continuous Improvement": A person who is overworked is simply unable to give the attention they need to their current tasks.
How did the use of the methodology affect the workflow as a whole?
Well, I can safely say that the work is moving much better. At the same time, kanban allows me to effectively flow into this movement.
Did you encounter any difficulties in the early stages of introducing personal kanban?
I would not say so, the system is quite simple.
I approached the issue of introducing personal kanban quite progressively. I still continued to use GTD software, including the excellent Nozbe, I just entered the same WIP limit. A simple operation is to limit the number of actions happening at the same time. The result is obvious. Early successes motivated me to take the next step and add a visualization element to my GTD system, as the kanban system implies. For this purpose, I used the Trello app.
At first, I didn't even consider using a "real" sticky note board, but many fellow kanban users spoke very positively about this "low-tech" approach (which I was actually very surprised at) at the WIP Society meeting in Manchester. so I decided to try it myself. And you know, this approach worked for five plus. I like the tactile sensations of working with a board and self-adhesive cards.
Tell me, have you noticed any flaws in the kanban system? Are there any elements you would like to improve?
Well, I can say that you should always experiment and look for a combination that is perfect for you. Kanban is based on “Lean Manufacturing”, a book that preaches the principles of Kaizen, i.e. continuous improvement. Think of the kanban system as a tool that allows you to do small experiments to gradually improve your workflow. There is no perfectly tuned system, just as no two boards are the same. Your board will change as your activity changes.
Does Kanban perform equally well in any task, or are there some that do not fit well into the concept of this method?
In principle, personal productivity is primarily a matter of common sense. In my case, kanban works great, but if you have a lot of the same type of repetitive tasks, then you don’t want to repeat the procedure for creating cards or records in a digital version of kanban every time.
This is reminiscent of the email story. Of course, there are very important letters that you need to work with separately - carefully and carefully. Apply the same principle when answering the question: is it worth creating a card for this project? After all, it is much more expedient to process most e-mails “in bulk”, and to do this exclusively in the time allotted for e-mails.
Kanban also clearly distinguishes between the work that you are, figuratively speaking, pushing or pulling. What is meant: there is work that is imposed on you - you push it, and there is one that you pull of your own free will. The ability to separate tasks in this way, in my opinion, is very important. Especially when it comes to e-mails. Email - best illustration imposed work - the one that has to be "pushed". It is vital to keep in mind the type of work you are doing at the moment. Very often people trade for processing e-mails instead of solving basic, larger tasks.
When processing incoming entries, it is very useful to use a system of tags that determine which kanban column a particular job will go to. For example, I recommend using the following categories: Priority 3, Priority 2, Priority 1, Done, Today, In progress (don't forget the WIP limit). This will help you prioritize, which in turn will lighten your burden of making key decisions, especially if you often find that you have to "push" for the most part, at the expense of more efficient work, which you need to "pull" and thereby achieve your main goals. your activities.
Do you have a preference for any particular application based on the kanban system? In your opinion, which format - electronic or paper - is more convenient to use?
My favorite way is to use self-adhesive papers and a regular wall. Even if smart software developers have condescended to use stickers in their most complex projects, we will have enough of them even more!
However, as a coach and trainer, I have to understand the wide variety of existing applications, including, Lately I experimented a lot with online tools. At the moment, my favorite is LeanKit, I have been using it for 4 weeks now.
Do you continue to use kanban when you are on the road? If yes, how do you solve this issue?
Yes, of course, I continue to use kanban while traveling. The best way- "paper". I keep my stickers in a special folder, in France we call it "trieur-parapheur". 
As for the electronic version, LeanKit provides easy access to your boards as there are versions for iPhone and iPad.
Can you describe how your day goes in the context of using kanban?
Certainly. So, I start the morning by inspecting the board and making the necessary changes. This means transferring several cards to the "In progress" column. I quickly assess the state of affairs on the board and, if necessary, correct something. Next, we begin to deal with tasks from the “In progress” column and perform them first. Each completed task is sent to the "Done" column. The basic principle is to keep the board always in front of your eyes so that you can constantly check it or make changes quickly. This way, if you plan an action during the day, you can immediately put it on the board.
What time do you check your board, how long does it generally take to create a board?
Creating your first kanban board is extremely simple. The minimum set is of three columns: Queue (i.e. To Do), In Progress, and Done. Thus, you have at your disposal a simple tool that will help you better understand your workflow. Next, you will just need to adapt the board, as they say, for yourself.
Kanban does not offer you a turnkey solution, but allows you to organize the system over time, through trial and error, in such a way that it fully meets your needs. Also, if your workflow changes, you can easily re-arrange the kanban to fit the new environment.
Work with the board, in fact, does not stop for a minute. Think of it like the dashboard of your office—you make changes all the time. There are times when you need to take a breath and evaluate where you are. And kanban will provide you with all the information you need to make an informed decision about how to proceed.
In general, it is customary to do a review at the beginning and end of the day, you can also conduct a kind of “debriefing” in order to understand how much you have progressed and what you have achieved. There are no hard and fast guidelines on how often to do it, you can just do a weekly debrief as recommended by the GTD system. Act at your own discretion, especially if working conditions change. The key word in working with the kanban system is "flexibility".
How many tasks/projects would you recommend to place on the board at the same time?
It all depends on your activity.
The use of kanban comes with a number of restrictions, such as the number of projects and tasks that can be on the board at the same time. Oh yeah... you also need to limit the number of projects/tasks you can work on in parallel.
Just as you limit the number of processes and tasks you are currently running, you can also limit the number of projects you are working on in parallel. Such a project-in-progress limit.
The latter seems very important to me, because many people repeat the same mistake in the process of applying the GTD philosophy. Yes, indeed part of the GTD process involves listing the projects and the next steps to be taken on each of them over the next year. However, many mistakenly believe that in this way all projects become active. On the contrary, a well-oiled GTD system provides limiting the number of simultaneously active projects. In GTD, there is a clear line between current projects and tasks, and what belongs to the category "Maybe / someday."
If you're using a list, especially if it's an electronic format, you might be tempted to lump together all the projects and all the "next steps" for each one. This can create a rather frightening picture - such a huge number of tasks and projects can really discourage all the hunting and enthusiasm.
However, the board has certain dimensions, it can fit limited quantity self-adhesive cards - such a limitation makes you think carefully about which projects are worth your attention at the moment and which are not. This limitation is, in a sense, an advantage, as it leaves you no choice but to "check the clock against reality."
How has your GTD practice changed with kanban?
One thing I can say about the interaction between GTD and kanban is that they are simply made for each other. I think using kanban has allowed me to take my productivity to the next level and bring me even closer to GTD standards. He made me remember the basic principles. The beauty of kanban is that, thanks to its visual component, you actually have a dialogue with your work.
Where can you be found online?
I'm active on Twitter, my nickname is @pascalvenier, my website address is
One of the basic principles productive work: constantly keep a list of things in front of your eyes, arranged in order of importance. So you are deprived of the chance to immerse yourself in thoughts for half a day: “What to do next.”
Many systems have been devised to implement this principle. Some of them are very complex, while others are extremely simple. Everyone chooses a system for themselves. And today I will talk about one of them. It's called Kanban, or to be precise, personal Kanban.
What is Personal Kanban
Personal Kanban is a very simple productivity and to-do list management system. It is built on two rules and is intended for visuals. All your affairs are located on the same plane, arranged by priority and degree of completion. The advantage of Kanban is its high flexibility, it can always be customized to fit your own work style and tasks.
Like many other productivity systems, Kanban helps to “unload” tasks from the head, leaving only one (or several) relevant in it. currently. This system was born in production, where the degree of priority of a particular work depends on the supply.
Personal Kanban was created by Jim Benson and Tonyan DeMaria Barry. They suggested that this system be used to increase the productivity of the individual. In 2011, their book Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life. The basic principles of Kanban have been used before. But the authors of the book streamlined everything and gave a specific methodology that really helps people who are loaded with a huge number of tasks.
The two main rules of personal Kanban are:
- Visualize your work. We should be able to see the scope and nature of the work at any given time. See what should be done at the next stage, get a clear hint about the degree of importance and completion of things. We should also be able to quickly and conveniently change the position of tasks in the overall system.
- Limit the number of tasks currently running. That is, the number of things you work with in each unit of time should be minimal. Firstly, it is easier to visually present the range of current work, which means that you will more effectively control the progress of their implementation. Secondly, it reduces the likelihood of switching to multitasking mode and subsequent burnout. If you learn to manage your workload, then you can learn how to say no without hurting your career.
Exist various options implementation of personal Kanban in practice. You can use complex applications and web tools, stickers or a notepad. There is no official recommendation for this (unless, of course, you start copying exactly the techniques from Benson and DeMaria Barry's book).
Getting Started Efficiently with Personal Kanban
There is nothing complicated here. All we need is some area (in the physical world or virtual) on which the to-do list will be placed. But things should be arranged according to a certain principle. In the simplest case, the area is divided into three columns:
- Postponed and planned;
- Executable;
- Completed.
In "Running" there are those cases with which we are working now or plan to do in the very near future. Ideally, the more important the case, the higher it should be in the column. So at a glance it becomes clear what to take on now.
The Postponed/Planned column contains all the cases that we are not currently working on, but that we still have to take on.
The "Done" column may seem optional. But it motivates us by showing how much work has been done (or hinting that not a single important thing has been done all day).
That's all, perhaps. You can implement personal Kanban into your workflow right now.
A white board for markers is perfect for us. Let's divide the board into three columns and scatter our tasks across them. When a task moves from one column to another, we erase it and rewrite it in a new location.
But it is more convenient to use paper stickers to record cases (one sticker for each task). This makes it easier to move them horizontally and vertically. Priority can be set using stickers of different colors. For example, green is low priority, yellow is medium, red is high.
Looking at such a board, you will immediately remember what you should be doing at the moment, and what tasks are “burning”. When the middle column is cleared or there are things left in it that are waiting for reactions from other people, you can start filling it with tasks from the Postponed/Planned section.
Don't forget the second principle, which is to limit the number of tasks you're working on at the same time. Do not neglect them. If you fill the middle column with tasks without emptying it, the burden of worries will soon crush you.
Benson and DeMaria Barry insist on keeping things as low as possible. Depending on the nature of your own work, set your maximum limit on the number of tasks at the same time in the "Running" column.
It is also worth limiting the number of tasks in the entire Kanaban. Let new and low-priority work wait in the Inbox pile. Kanban is more effective the fewer items it contains.
Programs and online services for the implementation of personal Kanban
If you don’t have the opportunity to hang a task visualization board in your workplace or you don’t work in one place, then all is not lost. There are other implementations of Kanban, among which you will probably find familiar names. Here are some applications and online services that will come to our aid:
- Trello: This increasingly popular service for organizing work and storing records was originally built on a Kanban-like system. Many people use it for GTD, but it works just as well for individual Kanban. All we need to do is create a separate board with the appropriate columns. In Trello, you can increase the effectiveness of Kanban by using a calendar with reminders and colored labels.
- KanbanFlow: This application is very similar to Trello, but even more "sharpened" for Kanban. There is an additional column "Today" (Today). With its help, we separate the tasks that are underway from those that we are working on right now. Personally, I consider this an unnecessary complication. In KanbanFlow, we can add notes and reminders to each task, limit the number of tasks in progress, and interact with others. KanbanFlow also has a Pomodoro timer, another tool to help you stay focused on your work. The site is well optimized for mobile devices - no additional applications need to be installed to work with it.
- (with the Kanbanote add-on): Evernote itself is not very good remedy to implement Kanban. Here it is impossible to organize a visual display of the entire scope of work. But this is fixable. Let's use Kanbanote, which will make lists in Evernote more visual. It will add three columns: Deferred, In Progress, Completed. There's even an Android app to make it easier for people on the move to use the system.
Of course, no one is forcing you to use Evernote for Kanban. But if you actively use it to organize your information, then turning this service into a productive work system is quite justified.
Integrating Kanban into an established productivity system
Personal Kanban is quite simple and flexible. It can be implemented on a wall or whiteboard, in a local program or Internet service, in a notebook or on a sheet of paper. And you can adapt it to the already used system of productive work.
The strength of Kanban is that it can be used in conjunction with other productivity methods. If you rely on GTD, Pomodoro, or the Eisenhower Matrix, you can integrate personal Kanban into them.
In principle, Kanban can be combined with any system based on to-do lists. You can combine your method with Kanban and see if this hybrid suits you. At the same time, you do not have to give up your favorite tools and rebuild something in your work.
Look at your to-do lists. In them you will surely find those things that are being done right now, completed and planned tasks. It remains only to arrange them in three columns. Everything is very simple here, but this method works!
In business, such concepts as “project management system”, “lean manufacturing”, “visualization of the work process”, “effective implementation of tasks” are now in vogue.
We all know and understand their meanings (at least approximately), but few people know that all this is a lot of parts of one system.
A system that helps companies run super-efficiently. And it's called Kanban.
The Kanban system is indeed a very powerful task management tool for different levels(even in sales).
And it is not for nothing that we can now see its implementation in different companies and services. Most likely you even used this approach, for example in .
And for many, such tools do not apply to marketing, but we believe the opposite.
After all, thanks to such an implementation, the company can do its job better and faster, which means that customers will be more loyal, will recommend us and will buy again and again. But let's start from the beginning to put everything on the shelves.
Write shura, write (s)
It looks unusual, but in action it is simply amazing. A new visitor receives an entrance ticket (card) as soon as it is released.
Thanks to this approach, the park gets an easy way to control visitors and saves management from controlling an overabundance of people.
WE ARE ALREADY MORE THAN 29,000 people.
TURN ON
Sales department
You are a sales manager. And dozens of clients pass through you every day. In addition to new ones, you have old ones that also need to send or call something.
In addition to all this, you need to control the execution of the contract, in the form of the provision of services or shipment.
This is the situation with a huge number of tasks per person in 9 out of 10 companies.
This is not normal, but natural in the conditions of our reality. How to deal with all this? How not to forget anything? How not to get a fine due to overdue dates? The implementation of the kanban system is coming to your aid.
You divide the entire stage of customer management into steps from A to Z. Starting from the first contact, ending with the signing of acts, and even better, calls from the “How are you?” series.
By the way, the call “How are you?” it is very interesting to increase loyalty and sales. So here is a video for you:
As a result, after the introduction of the kanban system, the employee fully sees the entire process of not only sales, but also project management.
It turns out a kind of synergy between the stages and the introduction of projects. Such is the personal kanban for employees.
Please note that now even sales are implemented using the kanban methodology, because this is really interesting.
Here is an example of a successful implementation of kanban by us and as another proof that kanban is possible in Russia:
Kanban Implementation Project implementation
With this, everything is as simple as possible. For example, you are a design studio. This means that the client project goes according to the planned plan before the client holds it in his hands. Each section of this plan has its own responsibilities and tasks.
With kanban implementation, it would look like this. When the sales manager has signed the contract, he passes the task (kanban card) to the first stage, which is called “Brief and Sizing”.
After all the wishes have been pulled out of the client, the person in charge transfers the card to the next stage - “Design” with another person in charge. Then the card goes to “Electrician”, “Cutter”, etc.
What is the output we have? And the fact that everyone sees how many tasks he has at this stage.
He can also estimate how many tasks he will have in the future and what plugs he has in stages (where to direct all his efforts). This is in its purest form an adaptation to any project implementation.
Project implementation Adaptation to business
Now let's imagine that I convinced you to start implementing the kanban system in your company.
What needs to be done for this? Use boards and kanban cards. All right.
You are probably now thinking about a real board that will hang on your office wall, and on which employees will stick their cards.
Is this what you think it looks like? But since we are in the 21st century, the board, as well as kanban cards, can be virtual.
That is why I have selected 3 programs that will help you implement the kanban system completely painlessly and efficiently.
1. Bitrix24
Probably the most famous in Russia. After all, as Bitrix says, their CRM is used by more than 2 million companies around the world.
I will not describe all the advantages, I can only say that now Bitrix can be configured specifically for your company, even in the free version. But back to kanban.
As in any CRM, in Bitrix 24 you can set tasks for yourself and for employees. And for convenience, you can do it in kanban, if you already decided that you liked this Japanese system.
You can customize the tabs by type “In Progress” and “Done”.
You can also see which task is being performed by which employee at the moment, which allows you to control productivity.
Bitrix 24 The most important plus is that this is a full-fledged CRM system, that is, all in one. You can manage clients in the same way that we discussed above in the sales department example.
And all this both from a computer and from a phone through a mobile application. A “must have” service for most companies. Although not the only one, it is free.
2. Trello
We ourselves used Trello for more than a year and were very satisfied until the projects became “Mother Do Not Cry”.
Firstly, it is free (but there is also a paid version), and secondly, it is very convenient and intuitive.
At the moment when we were choosing, we needed a system with the ability to track the entire project and single out those responsible for the stages. It didn't even occur to me that this was the essence of the kanban system.
Trello As I already wrote, the advantages of Trello are not even that it is free and convenient.
Another advantage is that there is a mobile application where you can view or set a task without being tied to a computer.
We liked Trello so much that we have already “hooked” several clients on it.
In general, if you need to effectively manage projects, set tasks and check their implementation, Trello is a great service to start on the way to this.
3. Kaiten
I found the Kaiten service only because the list of 2 items looks inferior.
But the more I studied it, the more I liked it. What is called a special service to introduce a team approach in your company.
kaiten There is a free trial period of 14 days (to be honest, I can’t imagine the service without this feature), the integration of all kinds of tools and two methodologies for convenient work: kanban and scrum (there will be an article about it later).
In addition, it takes into account one of the main principles of kanban - a limited number of tasks.
That is, you can set a certain number of tasks for each process / employee and he will not be able to add new ones until he completes the old ones.
Disadvantages: it is paid (although 500 rubles per user is not such a big fee) and so far the mobile application is only for Android users.
I myself am an ardent fan of Apple, but the developers of the service promise to please me soon by releasing a mobile application for iOS. It is difficult for me to fully evaluate the service, but the fact that it is worthy of attention is for sure.
Briefly about the main
I read, studied and implemented different systems project management - agile, scrum, xp, kanban.
And I can say that one of the easiest for a small and medium company is kanban.
Perhaps this is due precisely to the fact that most people are visual (that is, they perceive information visually), and the main principle of kanban is visualization.
But when your project grows or ceases to be linear, you will have to switch to other services and methodologies. But this is later, now kanban will be enough for you.
"Good Secretary" #1 2018
Personal kanban: how the conveyor can help in personal life
In the middle of the 20th century, Toyota invented one of the most popular time management systems without knowing it. "Kanban" means "message board" in Japanese. Cards with such announcements containing information about the product are attached at each stage of the production of the car. Moreover, there should always be a given number of cards on the line. In the conditions of the conveyor, this system still works perfectly. However, kanban has gone far beyond the automotive industry. Now the kanban card system is increasingly being used to improve personal efficiency and time management. From the popular book by James Benson to the electronic task planner Trello.
SPLIT ON THE SHELVES
The basis of the personal kanban system is the visual presentation of tasks and the limitation of the number of current cases. This makes it easy to create a kanban. Find the right panel for attaching buttons, cards or magnets. Divide it into three blocks: "Case", "In progress", "Done". Write down your personal affairs on separate cards, for clarity, highlighting the most important and urgent in color. Pin them in the "Case" column.
The basis of the personal kanban system is the visual presentation of tasks and the limitation of the number of current cases.
Next, select no more than three of them to move to the "In Progress" section. These will be the tasks that you should focus on at the moment. At the same time, you choose the time frame yourself, whether it be a week or a month. When completed, move the card to the last column and select a new case for the In Progress block.
The final “Done” block is extremely important. It helps to feel satisfaction from the work done. Studies have proven that we get a dopamine release just by saying the word "done". In the absence of the final stage, the brain will constantly return to unfinished business, and you will constantly find flaws in the work done.
To make the block even more useful, you can use coding. So, after a while, you will be able to see the prevailing characteristics of your work: what “sags” and what is done easily and quickly. If all the tasks seem urgent to you, this is a sign: you need to change something in your life.
Initially, Benson's idea of creating a personal kanban was intended for IT professionals. However, they did not like it, but it is successfully used in schools, public institutions and project-oriented organizations. By using kanban for personal activities, you can reduce the time for routine tasks, and distribute large projects more evenly. Ultimately, the kanban system allows you to better understand yourself, your aspirations and the characteristics of your work.
