If you’ve ever had that feeling of being overwhelmed and scattered because your to-do list is never-ending and you never seem to get anything properly finished, a personal kanban might work wonders. I switched to working this way years ago and find it excellent to help me focus my easily distracted brain.
In this week’s coaching reflections video, I take you through a very simple set-up. For more of these, check out my YouTube channel.
Here is the Defensive Calendering video that I talk about in this video, too.
Transcript
Intro
[00:00:00] Andy Polaine: When I ask my design leadership coaches, how and where they keep track of all the things they have to do, their answer is often a digital to-do list, a physical notebook, sticky notes on the desk, email, calendars, and of course the attention black hole that is Slack. There is a better way and that a personal Kanban.
My name is Andy Polaine and every week I spend my days coaching design leaders. And in these videos of reflect upon the common themes and questions that come up in the week. And I’m back after a few weeks of holiday and this week, I wanted to talk about avoiding that overwhelmed, scattered feeling and how to use a very simple, personal Kanban.
Personal Kanban Intro
[00:00:36] Andy Polaine: Now the idea behind the Kanban, most of you have probably used it in work, is you have several columns and they have different states and you move things that you’re working on through those columns.
Getting into the habit
[00:00:47] Andy Polaine: So, what you’re seeing here is a very, very simple Kanban. I’ve got this running in Obsidian. You can do it in Trello, you can do it obviously on a whiteboard with Post-It notes, but you can’t sync that, so I prefer to do it on a digital tool.
Bandwitdh
[00:01:01] Andy Polaine: There are a few basic principles to the idea of this. One is about bandwidth.
So the idea is the up here in this doing area. This is what you’re actually doing in any one day or any one time. And the key thing about this is this idea that you can only get a certain amount of stuff done in a day.
Now there’s a little bit of getting to know this and I found that it takes about three to four weeks to get into the habit of this. Generally, I think you get one big thing done in the day, plus a couple of smaller tasks and maybe something kind of very tiny. You know, like a phone call or replying to an email. You’ll end up doing other stuff during the day anyway. So, don’t be too draconian about this. Over the years I’ve tried different things. I had a look at Getting Things Done and all this. I find those too complicated and you end up messing around with the productivity system and this isn’t really about productivity. This is about focus and about sanity.
I’ve got project X I’ve put up here, because getting the granularity of this right is also quite important. Project X might be something I’m just working on every day or every week for a few weeks. So that’s going to take up a bunch of my time.
Include personal tasks
[00:02:10] Andy Polaine: But the crucial thing about this is I’ve got things like call the dentist and buy a milk on here, because those also take up my time. And if you don’t have any of your personal stuff in the personal Kanban, you’ll end up thinking you’ve got more time than you have, and then there’s no play in the system. So you might think, oh, I’m going to do all these things today and then someone says, oh, you know, I don’t forget to pick up our daughter from kindergarten and you’re like, oh, I forgot about that and that’s going to take an hour out of my day and so now I’m not going to get those things to do.
In general, the stress and that sense of overwhelm is coming from people overestimating the stuff they can get done in a day. And when you overestimate that, you say yes to too many things and you take on too many things and don’t say no often enough. And that means you let people down and then you get caught in that stress cycle again.
Stop stressing your brain
[00:03:00] Andy Polaine: So that’s one thing which is this idea about bandwidth. The other thing is the supposed neuroscience behind this is that having something on a to do list that’s ever-growing tickles your brain in a negative way. That your brain is constantly thinking I haven’t done that thing. Haven’t done that thing. And you’re turning over often the, to do list in your mind. Writing it down helps having a mental one is awful because you’ve really constantly doing that. Your brain is constantly being stressed by these incomplete tasks.
Adding an item
[00:03:25] Andy Polaine: So the idea behind this, someone says, I need you to give me that report about Andy. I added in here on my to do list. All right. And I give it a date and here I’ve got this set up to trigger a little date thing. Most things like Trello and stuff allow you to set a due date. And then I put it in there and then for my brain, it’s like, okay, that’s taken care of, I know this is coming up and I will get to this and I can get back to what I was doing.
I really recommend have a look at the other videos about defending your time and with email because I recommend you don’t get disturbed all the time. You know, just turn Slack off, turn your email off.
The backlog
[00:04:02] Andy Polaine: So then we have a to-do list.
This is your backlog, right? This is where this comes from, the Kanban obviously. And you need to get into two other habits.
Always start with the kanban
[00:04:09] Andy Polaine: One is that when you sit down to do anything. I’m detective you’ve been away from the desk and come back or in the morning, what you do is you go to this straightaway. You have a look at this doing section straight away. And you think about, okay, this is what I’m going to do now. And you’re only working on anything in here.
The waiting column
[00:04:24] Andy Polaine: If you have something like I’ve got this marketing copy for project Y launch here, right? And I’ve sent this off and I’m waiting for some feedback on that. You have a waiting column. So I might do a thing. I might write my newsletter, which is overdue– my newsletter is always overdue– and I’m waiting for something to happen, waiting for some approvals or something like that and I put it in waiting.
So that’s the discipline is always sit down, always look at what you’re doing first, and that keeps you focused.
Don’t start anything until a doing slot is free
[00:04:52] Andy Polaine: The second thing is you can’t do anything else, you don’t add anything else to this list until you’ve made a space. Think of it like a kind of parking lot. There’s only four spaces in there. And you can’t move something else in there until you’ve moved something out. So that could go into one or two places I’ve written my newsletter. In which case it will go into done.
Enjoy the done moment
[00:05:11] Andy Polaine: Or I put something into waiting. So if I put that into done. There we are - done. Now that little bit where you move something into done is really important. That gives you that little dopamine hit to your brain. It’s a really nice feeling and gradually that column will fill up . And if you remember the old days of peoples of writing a novel. I have a pile of blank paper on one side of the typewriter and then the manuscript grows on the other side. It’s really important to that sense of, actually, I’ve actually got quite a lot done this week, Rather than this sense of, oh, I’ve still got all this stuff to do. It’s a, it’s a subtle shift, but it’s really good for your sanity and your mind and your focus.
So now I’ve made a space, then I decided or something else to go in there. Now some of these things are date sensitive. Like reply to the CEO with thoughts on strategy. So I’m going to put that in there and then I’m going to sit down and do that. And then once I’ve done it, then it goes into done.
And that’s it.
Extra optional columns
[00:06:02] Andy Polaine: I have two more columns in my own personal kanban. One is this thing called an idea backlog, because I write and I make videos like this. I sometimes put stuff in there. It’s a bit of a shoe box for me. If I have an idea, I just put it there. I actually rarely use it because I have more ideas than I get around to doing. The second one is because I have a podcast, I have a podcast guest list on there and that’s just because it was easier to have it in there. I don’t really use it in the Kanban as much apart from maybe as a recording, that podcast goes into doing. But it’s just there as one extra.
Keep it simple
[00:06:33] Andy Polaine: My suggestion is you keep this very, very simple. This is why I hate productivity systems, because I feel the focus of those is this idea of, I’m going to become a ninja of productivity. I don’t think life is about productivity. I don’t think you should be just churning through as much stuff as you possibly can. I think life’s about creating stuff and having focus to do so. And I’m someone who’s quite easily distracted. I’ve never been diagnosed with ADHD. It wouldn’t surprise me if I did. I have lots of coachees who have it and this has worked pretty well for them. And it certainly takes a lot of the stress out of that feeling of everything you have to do.
So give it a try. It’s a very simple structure. You can do it in whatever tool you, you feel alike, just don’t fiddle around with it for ages. Just think about this idea of a, got a fixed amount of bandwidth. I put my stuff into the to do backlog. I moved something into doing once I’ve done that thing, I move it out to somewhere else. And I can’t start doing anything else until I move something out of the doing.
Outro
[00:07:31] Andy Polaine: I hope that’s useful for you. If you’d like to check out my coaching practice, it is at polaine.com/coaching and I’ll put the links below. If you’ve got any of your own tips about how you give yourself some focus and how you manage your to-do list please post a comment below. I’d love to hear them.
Thanks very much and I will see you again soon.
