Kanban: The simplest and most effective way to organize your daily tasks
If you like minimalism, you’re going to love this.
The Kanban method is one of the simplest and most powerful techniques I have ever seen.
I discovered it by chance, have been using it for some time now and have been impressed by it. Today I will tell you how to take advantage of this simple but powerful method to organize any kind of task in your life. It works for any field, for group and individual tasks and best of all, it adapts to each person without problems.
It’s amazing that something so simple to apply has so much potential.
What is Kanban and what is it for?
The story begins in the 1940s in Japan.
Taiichi Ohno, a Japanese engineer at Toyota, was looking to improve production processes in order to minimize the company’s costs and make work more efficient. Ohno then created a board on which to quickly view tasks according to their status and thus know at all times the next actions and detect possible problems or delays in the tasks that did not progress through the board (Anderson, 2010).
In fact, the word “Kanban” itself comes from the union of two Japanese words, 看 (look) and 板 (board).
The premise, as you can see, is simple.
How to make a Kanban?
Implementing Kanban is incredibly simple.
1. Create the board
Divide a board into columns representing the stages of a task, for example: “Pending”, “In progress” and “Done”. Each task is represented by a card that you should move from left to right across the board as the task progresses.
The board can be anything: a bookcase and a pencil, a wall with sticky notes, a blackboard, a computer application, etc. Also, you can modify the phases according to your needs. For example, I use “💭 Ideas”, “🔎 Researching”, “✍️ Writing”, “📄 Written” and “✉️ Sent” for Mental Garden.
It is highly flexible.
2. Define tasks
Define specific tasks.
A task cannot be “write a book”, the tasks of such a project would be “write table of contents”, “design cover”, “revise chapter 1”, etc. Divide it into parts so that it is clear what needs to be done.
The sum of all the tasks has to be the whole project, “write a book”.
3. Limit work in progress
You cannot attend to 100 tasks at the same time.
I learned this the hard way. I recommend that you limit the amount of work per state. It will help you prevent work overload and leaving too many tasks half done. I do this by putting a number next to the column, for example: “Writing (2)”. I will not write more than two letters at a time because in the end I don’t get clear and end up leaving them half done.
It is crucial to know yourself to make Kanban that suits you.
Try it out.
4. Analyze and improve
Regularly review your status columns and analyze if it would be convenient to add or remove any. This is key to identify bottlenecks.
Let me tell you a case of mine. My Mental Garden Kanban, as I was telling you, has “💭 Ideas”, “🔎 Researching”, “✍️ Writing”, “📄 Written” and “✉️ Sent”. I had a terrible bottleneck going from “Researching” to “Writing”. I would start researching a topic and that never ends, there was always more useful information I wanted to tell you in the letter, but you have to know when to stop.
Thanks to Kanban I identified that bottleneck and was able to fix it.
The solution was to demonstrate how to apply it. As you know, I usually give you information and tell you how to apply it. The moment I had the information clear and knew how to apply it, the “🔎 Researching” phase is over and the “✍️ Writing” phase begins.
This made me save a lot of time and maintain the quality of the texts.
Kanban Application
It won’t solve your life, but it will make it extremely easy.
Ahmad et al., (2013) saw that using it in technology companies saved time, improved communication, problem solving and the satisfaction of the team members when they saw how their actions contributed to the progress of the rest. On the other hand, a very interesting study by Sugimori et al. (1977) showed how using Kanban helped Toyota reduce waste and improve efficiency to the point of becoming the most efficient automotive company in the world for decades.
We can benefit from this in our day to day life, I will give you examples to inspire you.
I will give you some examples to inspire you.
1. Personal projects
Let’s imagine you are planning a trip to Paris. This would be a possible Kanban:
Ideas:
- See the Eiffel Tower
- See the Louvre Museum
- Cruise on the Seine River
To do:
- Buy plane tickets
- Book a hotel near the center
- Get euros in cash
In progress:
- Packing
- Confirming hotel reservation
Done:
- Buying large backpack
- Deciding on restaurants to eat at
- That’s how easy it is to get organized so you never forget anything and have everything up to date.
2. Group chores
Do you always end up doing all the household chores yourself? That’s the end of it.
Put a Kanban in a common area of the house and write down the tasks, for example: sweeping, mopping, dusting, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, shopping, watering the plants, etc. When someone makes progress on the task, write down his or her name and the date of progress.
At the end of the week we will see who does not cooperate.
Everything clear, simple, in real time and centralized in a single point.
✍️ It’s your turn: Do you often forget tasks or leave them half done? I used to be like this.
💭 Quote of the day: “Establishing a greater degree of order in your life can seem like a daunting, if not exhausting, task. It may seem impossible to you if you feel like you’re already overloaded. But taking the time to tidy up your day shouldn’t be an added burden but a relief for your future.” Cindy Trimm in Commanding Your Morning.
I hope you find it useful in your day to day life, I’m sure you do 😊.
References 📚
- Ahmad, M. O., Markkula, J., & Oivo, M. (2013). Kanban in software development: A systematic literature review. IIEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/seaa.2013.28
- Anderson, D. J. (2010). Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business.
- Ōno, T. (1988). Workplace management.
- Sugimori, Y., Kusunoki, K., CHO, F., & Uchikawa, S. (1977). Toyota production system and Kanban system Materialization of just-in-time and respect-for-human system. International Journal of Production Research, 15(6), 553–564. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207547708943149
