All Entries Tagged With: "prioritization"
Complex Lives Pt 2: Visualizing Real Work
In part one of Complex Lives, we set a Future in Progress (FIP) limit for Jessica, a busy and active single mom. Her goals were overwhelming her ability to get things done. So we reigned them in by giving her a FIP limit. That was step one. Step two is visualizing that FIP. Jessica was [...]
Work / Life Balance
I’ve been surprised lately by the number of people asking me about work/life balance. We feel we are undervaluing our family ties, our personal goals, our community involvement, our hobbies and our art. Oftentimes our work makes us feel isolated – we feel alone and seek meaning in our lives. Amusingly, we feel like we’ve [...]
When Good Tasks Go Bad
Yesterday we were introduced to Richard, who is juggling the demands of several clients trying to keep each of them happy. His largest project entails working alone on a client’s mission-critical legacy system. So in the last blog post we discussed his tasks and task types. As we discovered, outlining those task types proved invaluable [...]
What Are Your Task Types?
Flexibility is an unsung virtue. People want absolutes: “Do this, then do that, don’t deviate and then you’ll achieve success.” But we all know that absolutes are often false, and that context is king – in life, in work, and in all human endeavor. So limiting our WIP needs to take context into account, even [...]
Dependencies in Personal Kanban
Dependencies are things that occur in succession. One thing happens, then another thing can happen. Ideally, on a kanban, the value stream will visualize these transitions. For a value stream like this: Analysis -> Creation -> Refinement -> Launch refinement is dependent on both analysis and creation. That neatly takes care of dependencies, but in [...]
The Priority Filter: A Tutorial
Prioritization is often even more difficult and daunting as the tasks that confront you. A priority filter in your Personal Kanban helps you determine what tasks are ready in your queue, and the order of importance they should assume. Click on the video below for a quick priority filter tutorial. Note: This video is best [...]
Am I Productive, Efficient, or Effective?
Productivity: having the power to produce Efficiency: the ratio of the output to the input of any system Effectiveness: being able to bring about a desired result Personal Kanban is considered a Productivity tool, because it gives us the power to produce more. It is likewise said to increase Efficiency by limiting WIP and increasing focus [...]
Urgent and Important: Incorporating your existing tools into Personal Kanban
We’ve devised Personal Kanban to adapt to any system you might currently use (unless of course your preferred system is utter chaos). The only two rules are visualize your work and limit work-in-progress (WIP). PK’s main goal is to get you to write things down and begin to watch how and what you complete. Last [...]
WIP and Priorization: Recommended Portions
You’ve been hiking all morning and the mercury is nearing 100. You’re parched. You need water – lots of it. But even in your thirst, you want that water to be manageable. Which holds more water – a lake or a drinking glass? Which will satisfy your thirst – a fire hose or a drinking [...]
Pulling in Batches – The “Today” Column
We don’t always pull one task at a time. Every day, cognitively, we pull in batches.
