A Personal Kanban & a OneNote Folder for Every Client, Project, Aspect of Life

For the last couple years I have almost always had 5 to 10 active Personal Kanbans in Trello along with a folder in OneNote and another in Outlook or gmail (one for each PK). I have one of these trios for each client. I also have a trio for personal/home projects and another for church projects. I can access all 3 of these on my Mac, my windows laptop, and my Android phone. Sweet!

I'll generally work on one client or one project per day, or for a week, or even a month at a time. Whenever I finish for the day I endeavor to ensure my PK and notes pages are all up to date and in a state that will help me pick it back up tomorrow or some other day. Whenever I switch contexts, it's a simple matter to switch which Trello board and which OneNote folder I'm viewing.

I really like the way these work together. It's helping me become paperless which is a bonus given my travel and the number of notes I need to search for (and the sloppiness of my handwriting). This approach has segregated notes and tasks and emails into specific views so that I don't get distracted by what I don't need to focus on at the moment.

Seeing people take notes on a laptop, or open laptops in general, can be off-putting to many people. This is especially true when working with many different people or with a newish client, where we're still gaining trust and feeling each other out and haven't had many (or any) interactions yet. So I tend to take notes on paper whenever I'm having a conversation in person. Then I'll transcribe what is important of those notes into my PK or OneNote. Rewriting them (I'm told) helps to digest, consolidate, and remember what is important, a skill I never got the hang of in school. Many of my colleagues use those fancy pens to record handwriting and automatically convert it to text. I can see the benefit of that, but I'm a late adopter of new technology, due in part to being overly frugal. (I used a paper PK for a long while, until I found Trello.) I think I'll stick with manually reviewing and transposing the notes for a while.

All of this has gotten my life very organized. David Allen's Getting Things Done has helped too, but I've covered that in a prior post.

This may be the fastest blog post I've ever cranked out, one of the few I've cranked out in one sitting. I didn't know where the post was going to go until I wrote it. I just thought I'd share something about this system since it's been so powerful for me. I figured there was a blog post to be written about this, but I didn't/don't know what my readers would want to know. 

What have I not covered that you'd want to know?

What's DOING in Personal Kanban?

What do you do with Stories on your Personal Kanban that you are going to put aside for a day or three?

I'm committed to limiting my Work In Process (WIP) and to "stop starting / start finishing" but some stories/tasks just need to be put aside. I'm not talking about tasks that are blocked, waiting on someone else. Those I'll either flag or move to a Waiting/Blocked column. Rather, this post is about stuff that I need to stew on or need to come back to when my mind is ready. What do you do with those? Herein I'll tell you what I do, but I'm really interested in what you do. Please post your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

I don't have a HOLD column on my personal kanban wall. Hold seems to be a misnomer for me. It's a kind of lie. The work really still is in progress. It's WIP. I'm going to come back to it this week, maybe tomorrow, maybe even today. It ain't done.

I could split my task or story each time I feel the need to set one aside, putting part of it in DONE and part of it back in a ready column, but I kind of like my definition of what is a story, what is a task and what is a next-action (or sub-task). I don't want to monkey with that. Anyway, splitting stories is a kanban hazard.

PROJECTS, STORIES, TASKS, NEXT-ACTIONS & SUB-TASKS

For the following discussion you need to understand my context:

I have Projects (held in a folder) that get broken down into multiple Stories, each Story on its own stickie. Some Stories are stand-alone, not related to any Project.

I also have some Stories that have multiple "next-actions" (or tasks or sub-tasks, whatever you choose to call them). In the spirit of Getting Things Done (GTD), I note the next-action, or next several actions, on the Story stickie. Often, each one of these next-actions might take 5 minutes or less, so they don't seem to be a Story deserving of a stickie of their own.

So here's what I do for those tasks in that nebulous state of not done but not active either. I'd love for you to add your thoughts in the comments.

IT'S DOING

Some of my to-dos need time to stew, such as writing a blog post. I have lots of outlines and rough drafts. I create drafts quickly when the idea comes to me. Such activity never enters my personal kanban. In the spirit of GTD, if it takes less than a couple minutes to do, just do it. I very rarely create a Task or Story for such activity.

But when I select a draft blog post to finish, I put the blog-post Story on my personal kanban in DOING and leave it there until I'm done-done. But I won't finish it in one setting. I'll flesh it out and let it sit. I'll come back to it, pretty it up, put in some links and gather some photos, and let it sit. I'll proof read and polish it and paste it into blogger, and let it sit. I'll come back to it some morning to be sure it's ready to go, publish it, and tweet it. During all of that, I might add a next-action (sub-task) either into my draft blog post (such as "--insert photo here--") or onto the stickie (such as "trim the photos").

I'm pretty satisfied with how I do that.

IT'S DONE FOR TODAY AND A TODO FOR TOMORROW

Other times I'll have a to-do that I want to work on a little each day, such as practicing a coding kata or revising/rehearsing a short speech. Maybe I'll put a "next action" (sub-task) for each day of the week on the stickie and check them off as I go.

I don't usually leave those in DOING for the week. If I've done it for today, I don't like leaving it in the DOING column. I usually move them back to some ready column each day. But it's still in progress for the week.

I'm not completely satisfied with how I do that. Sometimes I've left such a story in DOING.

What do you think about this? Do me a favor and post your thoughts in the comments before you go.

Personal Kanban Retrospectives

At the end of each week I do a quick retrospective on my use of Personal Kanban, the tasks I've completed, and the week in general. I don't do anything elaborate or time consuming. Just a simple evaluation of how I'm doing.

I use two particular approaches to my personal kanban retrospectives more than any other.

+s and Δs

With Pluses and Deltas I think more about what worked well and what I want to change going forwards. Sometimes I use 'Regrets' instead of 'Deltas'. I do look at the tasks I accomplished, but with this approach my mind considers more than the tasks. For example, some of my notes from prior retros include things like: relaxed, haven't been inbox-zero for a while, did I forget to plan?, someone important linked to my blog post, got a great lead from someone, so-and-so is unreliable, such-and-such didn't pan out, well prepared for next course, successful partnership with so and so, good blogging this week, etc. I use index cards for this style retrospective.

Most Successful / Least Successful

The other approach I use lots is to simply arrange my completed tasks by how I feel about them. Some I feel really good about. Some weren't so successful. Maybe some are neutral.

I'll take notes, again on an index card, on these high points and low points.

Not a Commitment

What I don't do is compare my actual achievement against a plan. I do "plan" my week, but it's not a commitment to specific tasks. It's more of a re-prioritizing of the backlog and preparation for the days ahead. I use that time to make sure I don't miss any commitments or fail to prepare appropriately.

I hope you found this useful. What kind of Personal Kanban Retrospectives do you do?

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What I Discovered About Personal Kanban and Getting Things Done

Not long ago I wrote about some changes I made to my personal kanban. Today I'm writing about why I do this. Much has been written about the benefits of using Personal Kanban and Getting Things Done (GTD) so I'm going to stick to what I personally get out of it.

I get uneasy when I have lots of unfinished projects around the house, half-read books languishing, things I've started and have forgotten about. ADD runs in the family so I'm likely an undiagnosed sufferer. When I rediscover something I once thought was important and have since forgotten, I remember why I thought it was important and feel bad for having not finished it. I feel stressed about needing to put one thing aside and finish the newly rediscovered badger. It's a little stressful. Not "I can't take it anymore!" stressful. Just a nagging background stress. There are plenty of stressors in my life so I don't want to add more if I can help it. And I can help it.

When I first started using them, GTD and Personal Kanban made matters worse. And better. It made me feel worse because now everything is visible -- all the half finished projects and incomplete initiatives. Yet it made me feel better, knowing that I won't forget anything. It also helped me prioritize my work explicitly and stick with that prioritization for as long as that prioritization made sense. My kanban helps me remember why things are in the state they are in, being intentional about what I choose to do.

After a while, GTD and kanban helped me reduce the backlog of partially completed work. It helps me focus on work already started. It helps me not start new activities that are of equal or lower priority -- or things that have a lower Cost of Delay. Seeing how much I have in process helps me to stop starting new work and to start finishing what I've already got going on.

I also discovered how much longer it takes me to finish tasks than I thought. Oh, yeah, "blog post"; I'll just typety type, a little proof reading, maybe a picture and I'll be done in half an hour. Heh. No, not really. Takes me a bit longer than that for the type of posts I do and the care I put into them. And there are all the other things: tweet it, email it to the person who requested I write about it, put a notice about it on some appropriate LinkedIn group, get interrupted for dinner, go to an Agile Atlanta meetup, decide to finish it tomorrow after work, and ultimately edit this post again because I thought of something else that should go in, like this paragraph. Anyway, kanban helps me understand that I'm an overly optimistic estimator. Understanding that helps me put stuff in the backlog instead of just starting it.

Now I feel much better. Sure, there are new things that come along that are Important, Urgent or have a High Cost of Delay, and I'll increase my WIP for a while. And that can be stressful. But it's a different kind of stress. No more is it "I have all this work and it's out of control". Now it's "I have some important work to do, but I know what it is, what state it's in, where it is stored, when it's due, and I feel in control." I still have a lot I want to do. But I'm in control.

Changes to My Personal Kanban

I thought you might be interested in some improvements I made to my personal kanban wall this week. I know these aren't the best pictures, but below you'll see a before and after view.

FLOW
First, I reversed the board to flow right to left. This feels more like pull to me. I'm pulling work from the right rather than pushing work to the right. I think this will feel more like pull whenever the board is directly in front of me, or a little off to the right. If I could position the board out to the left of my desk, moving stickies left to right might feel like pull.

HEADERS
I prettied up the headers. The others were ugly. I was tired of looking at a sloppy wall. I don't mind the transient stuff to be sloppy, but I wanted the headers to be a little more neat. I could have done a decent job if I took my time, but I decided to ask my awesome wife, Laura, to make new headers for me.

As part of that, I cut the header stickies down to about a third of the size of the stickie. This, plus writing them with a sharpie, makes them look more like headers and also not take up so much space. This allowed me to feel free to move the header below the window muntin. When I first put the headers above the muntin I thought the muntin would feel like a heavy underline separating the header row from the other rows in a table. I think the muntin was too big for that to look right. Didn't achieve the desired effect.

Before

After

IMPORTANT/URGENT
I used to have "This Week" and "Today" columns. I really liked the "Today" column. I have been making a fair attempt to plan a day and a good attempt to do today's stuff today. But "Today" didn't always mean today. Sometimes it means "today or tomorrow but don't wait until the end of the week". Really, it meant something more like "Important and/or Urgent, don't let it slide".

Compared to how I planned and executed my days, I have been making a better attempt to plan a week but I didn't stick to the plan as much as I thought I would. For the most part, that's okay. I adapted as priorities shifted and as opportunities presented themselves. But I also let important stuff slide. "This Week" really meant something more like "Important and it might become Urgent if you let it slide".

Not sure how it will turn out, but I've now got Important, Urgent, and Important-and-Urgent columns. I can already see that I have lots of Important stuff. I couldn't really see that before. At least I'm not buried in Urgent stuff.

NOT READY
I also used to have lots of todos stuck over on the window stile. It was clear that I needed more room for my backlog. In addition to the stuff I had planned for Today and This-Week, I had all kinds of other stuff that I thought I should make a stickie for. There was stuff I wanted to do, but I just wasn't ready to do them. There was stuff that wasn't ripe; the timing wasn't right or there was another task to do first. All these things aren't exactly the same as Waiting. For me, Waiting is waiting for someone else. So I created the "Not Ready" column.

I had been putting recurring tasks above the header. That's stuff I wanted to do each week. I may still do that.

MAYBE
The new Maybe column is for stuff that is ready to pull but that isn't quite that Important yet. These tasks are things I can do if the mood strikes me. If I have the energy and focus to do a Maybe task but not the energy and focus to do something Important, then why not pull a Maybe task? This is a concept from Getting Things Done (GTD). There is a lot of overlap between GTD and personal kanban:

Get stuff out of your head and onto a system you can trust to free up your mind and then do the most important next-action that you have both the time and energy to do, taking advantage of opportunity and location.

I have an additional pile of Maybe next-actions in the front of my GTD card file on my desk. Here is a photo of that:

DONE
I've been stacking my Done stickies starting at the BOTTOM of the Done column, each one slightly higher than the one below it. This keeps the sticky part of the stickie on the glass so they don't fall off, but takes up less room on my kanban wall. This obscures the title of the done tasks underneath the top one, but that hasn't bothered me.

I clean off my done column each week, record my velocity (which I haven't really done anything with yet), have a retrospective, recycle the old stickies, plan my next week, and plan my day. I didn't make any changes to that.

DID YOU GET ANY IDEAS?
I hope you got some good ideas from this post for improving your own GTD or Personal Kanban. Would love to hear about any changes you plan to make after having read this. Before you go away, please post your immediate thoughts in the comments.