If you are anything like me, you will have a monster reading list. Do you manage it? Do you focus on a few books at a time? If not, maybe you should, to better enjoy that fiction or help manage your reading based learning?Problem - Too Many Books, Not Enough Time & Bad HabitsI have a lot of books waiting to be read thanks to a nasty '1-click' habit with Amazon, I also have a decent amount of quality reading time due to a lengthy commute, yet I just can't read them all soon enough, and the list keeps growing. Part of the problem is that until recently I had a bad habit of picking up books, reading a few hundred pages, getting distracted by another book, and before I know it I have five books on the go, which is plain silly. The result was a load of books I have finished, and a load I have touched on, yet not fully focused upon and completed. I asked myself - "If only I could drop this wasteful habit and focus on completing a few books at a time, the NET result would be different, namely, more books read and better understood over any period of time, with less wasteful unfocused reading and rereading".Solution - Enter the 'General Reading Personal Kanban'Funny name for this pattern right? Why not just "Reading Personal Kanban"? Well, I'm going with this one on the basis that I think there are two types of reading we do, an end-to-end style (General Reading), and for those that use various learning techniques, like a SQ3R, a 'SQ3R Personal Kanban' pattern is in the works, so expect a post soon. In the meantime, 'General Reading' can encompass anything factual or fictional, and I personally tend to carry one of each type of book with me.The root of the problem is one of focus and priority. If there is one thing I have learnt about Kanban is it can be used, amongst other things, to address these two subjects simply and directly. Below is an example based on my current reading list, using a great tool called AgileZen:How does this give focus and priority? Quite simply. The Kanban describes the process from left to right of first prioritising the reading, reading and then finishing books. Each step, bar the backlog and the completed step, has a work in progress limit (WIP). This WIP limiting is the aspects that enables the narrowing of the prioritisation, then tight focus on the act of reading - I like a WIP of two so I can have a factual and a fictional book on the go. To complete a book, we pull a book off the backlog through the process to add to the flow of books being read over time. You can read more on Kanban in general and why it works elsewhere on this site under Primers.My own General Reading Personal Kanban forms part of my overall productivity system, which I am writing about here.