There are many different ways to get organized, and starting with yourself is the essential first step. Jim Benson (
@Ourfounder) literally wrote
the book on Personal Kanban, taking the Lean principles of Kanban and applying them to one’s personal life.
We love these ideas, and we’ve been busy making Kanbanpad the ideal Personal Kanban tool, and we wanted to share with all of you what we’ve been doing, and even more importantly, why.
Take a moment to think about your to-do list. Whether mental, written down, or tracked with a listing app, your to-do list is lying to you. Your list is a clump of large tasks, and you have the very real intention of meticulously crossing off each of them until you’re left with a pile of completed tasks. It calls to you like a siren, with promises of productivity and accomplishment, and convinces you that this cluster of tasks is the epitome of project management happiness.
It’s not.
To do lists lead to several efficiency roadblocks. Multitasking is a myth, overloading is a real detriment to accomplishment, and the shotgun approach to task management leads to a lot of half-finished items. Yet, we continue to use to-do lists, believing wholeheartedly that we’re the problem. We lack the motivation and responsibility to complete our tasks, and our to-do lists are the victims, being horribly neglected by their cruel masters. None of this is true.
Multitasking doesn’t exist. What we believe to be multitasking is really task-switching. The average human brain can process a finite number of tasks at one time. We’re constantly switching back and forth between to-do list tasks, which requires a period of brain-resetting, putting yourself back into the optimum frame of mind for the task you’ve switched to. Meanwhile, as you’re juggling your tasks with the perceived ease of a circus performer, here comes Mr. Manager, Mrs. Wife, or any of the other influences in your life asking you for “one quick thing.” How do we get anything done this way? It’s simple. We don’t.
Multitasking leads to overloading. That moment when you take a step back and realize “there’s no way I’m going to get all of this done,” is very real and can lead to only two ends. Either we end up with a few finished tasks and a lot of half-finished tasks, or we finish all of our tasks, but they’re sloppy and internally incomplete. Neither of these are ideal.
The shotgun approach is how many people go about tackling their to-do lists. Do a little here, a little there, eventually we’ll end up with everything done. That’s not how it works. We envision ourselves dividing our tasks into smaller, easier to maintain tasks and valiantly slaying them in a giant battle just you against your numerous tasks. In reality, however, we’re pricking each of them with a push-pin, hoping that’s enough damage to move onto the next rapidly-approaching foe.
But, how do we fix this? How do we pry ourselves away from our to-do lists, and where do we from there?
Two words: Personal Kanban.
Kanbanpad is our gift to the project management world, and now we’ve made it just as easy for you to use Kanbanpad for your personal life.
Let us introduce Personal Kanbanpad. It’s easy to get started and is viewable from the same dashboard you’re used to seeing in your working life.
To start, create a project, in the pop up modal, choose “Personal” from the Privacy Level drop down. You can still assign personal kanban boards to organizations, or you can keep them private.
Once inside your project it will look very similar to other Kanban projects. The difference here is that there the UI elements for assigning tasks are gone. This simplifies Kanbanpad boards to fit more effectively into your personal life. Just as you do with any other Kanbanpad board youc an adjust your columns to fit your project or life. You can start with something as simple as a 1 column board, with your backlog, completed tasks, and an in-progress column.
As you begin to shape personal Kanban to fit into your everyday life, you will adjust your board accordingly by adding or deleting columns, adjusting Work In Progress (WIP) limits, or any of the many other ways Kanbanpad allows you to shape your Kanban experience.
Get your life in order and start getting stuff done!
Let us know how you like our new Personal Kanban.
