Managing and Working Through That Ever Growing Reading List

generalreadingpersonalkanban

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.

Cards are Conversations

The whole point of having a visual control is to extract information from it quickly.  In this respect, the personal kanban is much like a geographic map.Geographic maps convey more than merely the physical environment, they show us things like political, historic, organizational characteristics - both real and imagined spatial constraints - which give locations their context. Similarly, the personal kanban is a map of  your work. It captures not just the tasks - but the logic, the flow that gives it an actionable framework

This is known as a pattern language.

11:26 AM

A language that helps us describe complex concepts simplisticly, by understanding their contexts.

11:27 AM

As we use the kanban to learn the pattern language of work, we have more kaizen events, more epiphanies, because we are finally understanding its true context.  We learn what value really is, what our capabilities really are.

11:28 AM

threats disappear

This is known as a "pattern language,"  a language that helps us describe complex concepts simplistically, by understanding their contexts. As we use the personal kanban to discern the pattern language of  our work, we encounter more kaizen events - more epiphanies - because we are finally understanding its true context.  We learn what value really is, and what our capabilities really are. Soon, threats disappear.

Modus Cooperandi Personal Kanban

I have intentionally made this personal kanban screenshot illegible because the text does not matter. What matters are the visual cues - the colors, the assignments, and the states.In this kanban, we have three staging columns: a working column, "The Pen" (to hold tasks in a state of workus interruptus), and "Complete."Immediately we see that today our WIP is filled with teal tasks.  Those happen to be for the creation of Gov 2.0 University, one of our projects.  We’re getting ready to launch the web site and conduct some media events, so this particular day was spent focusing on those tasks.We also see that yellow tasks (biz dev with a specific channel partner) make up most of the work in a waiting state.  So now we understand that on our plates for this day, we have a lot of focus on G2U, but that biz dev might rear its head as an activity from The Pen becomes active.So while those yellow tasks might interrupt us, the kanban has mentally prepared us for them.Those yellow tags likewise tell us a story over time. We know their history. Did they appear yesterday or did the come up over time? Are those tasks ones that recur and just never go away?Do we have a deluge of project tasks (e.g. teal) that need to be batched and processed as a day with a single focus? Perhaps we have a deluge of different projects, but all similar task types (e.g. phone calls) that can be batched.What personal kanban reminds us is to look beyond the tasks to the patterns that arise on the board. Work now has a shape. You can begin to think of it in other ways.You can situate it in its context. Work has a geography.With personal kanban you can now see the entire river – where it emanates from, where it reaches, and how it flows – rather than dismiss it simply as a body of water.In an upcoming post, the pattern language of work will be explored.

GTD & Kanban: Series Overview

For a long time I have been a Getting Things Done (GTD) advocate in both my personal and professional life, starting from the basics and working my way up to a full blown implementation in various paper and electronic forms over the years.  GTD has been a huge help, yet I have always felt there is something missing in my implementation that helps me better manage prioritisation and focus around work, which led me to explore the use of Kanban as a form of GTD list.  Over a series of posts I intend to explore a number of aspects of GTD and how I have applied Kanban to limit my work in progress, adopt a pull based system, and overall, increase the flow of completed actions in my key areas of focus in life and work:

1. GTD & Kanban: Similarities, Differences & Synergies Between The Two

2. GTD & Kanban: Managing The Relationship Between Someday/Maybe & Active Projects

3. GTD & Kanban: Work In Progress Limiting GTD Next Actions Within A Context

4. GTD & Kanban: Inboxes, Lists, Calendars, Kanbans & Mind Maps Working Together In Harmony

5. GTD & Kanban: An Example Of It All Coming Together

Getting Things Done Workflow

I am getting value from the changes I have made to how I work, yet still experimenting to improve.  Any suggestions or questions, please do comment or email in the interest of moving all of our understanding forward.