Some great points Jim.
We use JIRA at work and the work gets done.
The personal kanban approach has not worked for me.in the past as the apps are all about teams and stats.
I am in the process of building a simple personal kanban tool.
Ok I had a crack at adding a 35 minute Pomodoro timer to each card
https://app.swelltasks.com/board/home
So now each task can have a pre assigned block of time.
Now I need to figure out how to track them in a stats board.