To-do or Kanban? WHY NOT BOTH?

On Monday, I made a simple discovery that changed my day and PROBABLY MY LIFE, YOU GUYS!

First, though, let’s review what kanban is. It’s a bare-bones system to manage your tasks, and in the world of Lichtenbergianism, managing your TASK AVOIDANCE amounts to the same thing. There are only two guidelines:

1. Visualize your work.

2. Limit your work.

That’s it. The actual practice is just as simple. Have a whiteboard/bulletin board, something which is always in your view as you work. You have three columns: TO DO / DOING / DONE. Write every single thing you need to do on sticky notes and put them in the TO DO column. That’s the “visualize your work” part.

Now, have only 3–5 sticky notes/tasks in the DOING column at a time. If something in the TO DO column becomes pressing enough that you need to move it over into your full DOING column, you have to move one of those sticky notes back into TO DO. No more than 3–5 items in the DOING column. Limit your work.

Like this.

(If you’d like a very good overview and deep dive of kanban, head over to personalkanban.com. I also recommend their book.) (Also my book.)

One of the values of kanban (other than allowing you to focus on 3–5 things) is that it also allows you to see what you’re avoiding working on, a critical component of TASK AVOIDANCE.

If you’re like me, you also have a To-Do app (Things3 for me) on your phone just so that you don’t forget to cover all the back deck furniture before the pressure washing guy gets here, etc. A to-do list is not a kanban list; for one thing, I don’t really put my creative projects in the to-do list, just the stuff I have to do.

But also if you’re like me, your to-do list can get to be a bit of a morass, especially these days when it doesn’t seem to matter whether you get most of it done or not. So what’s a procrastinator to do?

I’LL TELL YOU WHAT. On Monday, staring balefully at my to-do list, I wished there were some way to focus my attention, like kanban, and I suddenly realized…

…if I made a new to-do item…

…and all it was was a line: ———————— …

…then I can arrange my to-do list so that there are only 3–5 items above that line at any given time.

Presto and also hey-nonny-nonny too as well: a hybrid to-do/kanban tool. Whenever you complete one of the top-tier tasks, slide another one up into its place. Or, you know, do those 3–5 things and call it day. Cras melior est, after all.

Your to-do app may already allow you to do this, so feel free to roll your eyes at my peasant-like simplicity, but if not, this could be a game changer for you as well.

Here, have a photo:

You’re welcome.