Save the Date! Jim Benson Featured Guest on Yi-Tan Call

374641215_6d6d72fde3

Save the date! Monday, January 4th at 10:30 PST/1:30 PM EST for the weekly 40-minute Yi-Tan Tech Community call hosted by Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn.The topic?Personal Kanban, of course!Call, listen, and chat with Jim Benson (@ourfounder on Twitter) as he discusses:

• Why we stress over the tasks we are confronted with;

• What we can learn from the nature of our work; and

• Why visualizing our work with Personal Kanban helps create the clarity necessary to keep control of our lives.

The discussion will assume the format of a conference call, allowing anyone to join the conversation (or just listen) at any point.For an invite, please sign up at  Yi-Tan here, or contact Tonianne for more information.Photo by: David

Tools Talk: Julia Child Understood the Nature of Work

IMG00348-20091227-1904

IMG00345-20091227-1901

IMG00337-20091227-1859

IMG00349-20091227-1912

While expertise, good humor, humanity, and care are words that immediately come to mind when describing Julia Child, the iconic chef personified something else - she understood the nature of her work. She recognized the role it played, the value it brought, the actions involved in creating it, and the opportunity costs in choosing certain methodologies over others.That is why we are canonizing her as our Personal Kanban saint.Yesterday I had the good fortune to spend some time at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History contemplating her kitchen.  Where Martha Stewart’s kitchen is the epitome of OCD tidiness, Julia Child’s kitchen looks as if the instruments of her craft were shaped only slightly differently than if she’d be making furniture or refitting a 1952 Studebaker.That's because Julia Child’s kitchen was her workshop.Julia Child could have had the most cutting-edge kitchen in the world, and most likely she could have had it for free. Surely any appliance company would have paid handsomely to say they custom-fit her kitchen with their latest product line.But instead she chose to used the same range for 40 years.Her arsenal of cutlery was mismatched, "unsexy" by today's standard. Her pans hung from every available surface - from walls, doors, wherever they would fit. Each knife, each pan had its place, fitting perfectly within a designated spot or outline. It wasn't a mess, but it wasn't streamlined, either.Julia Child said things like,“I am a knife freak.”and“Life itself is the proper binge.”and“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”Her demeanor and her actions seamlessly integrated her passion for food with everything else in life. She understood her work and as such, it ceased to be work.It became life.She was organized without being compulsive. She was meticulous but retained her humor. She had little to prove, but everything to share.To the right we see, unsurprisingly, Julia Child’s Wine Kanban. Every bottle, as it ages, is tracked to the point of drinking.We have pots and pans on a visual control, knives on a visual control, wine on a visual control. For Julia, her stuff didn’t just go places, it was a marker for the nature of her work. If a 6 quart sauté pan was missing from its place on the wall, it meant it was in use.Her tools told her story.Her tools represented her creation of value.The take-away here is that visual controls are always graphic markers of how we work. The more seamlessly we can integrate visual controls into how we actually work and live, the less time they take to maintain.  Especially for specific projects, where we are already focused and updating, a literal kanban may take more time than is necessary – creating elegant visual controls that stem from the actual activity can really help give the task an internal coherence and make it easier.Take a page from Julia’s cookbook and examine your work. What might your tools be saying to you?

Towards a Leaner Santa: Holiday "Do" Date-ban

Chalk it up to a decade with the nuns and my time as a Girl Scout (always be prepared!), but I obsess over details. Having my "stuff" in one bag or my proverbial ducks in a row is how I delude myself into thinking I can make sense of my universe. Still, I spend many sleepless nights worrying about that stray comma I didn't catch in time for today's deliverable, or that broken link that needs tending to before tomorrow's presentation.Yeah, I sweat the small stuff. Freud even has a word for me.Yes...that word.I however, prefer to see myself as "uber-organized."So when an aggressive December 29th client deadline threatened to Grinch my Christmas Eve and Day celebrations, I thought I had things covered. After all, my guest list is etched in stone, my menu is planned, and 90% of the gifts on my list were purchased by November.And they were wrapped.Yay, me.Then why - I asked myself - did I feel as if my combined personal and professional workflow was pulling me under?Considering the amount of vowels in my name, missing Christmas is not an option. Somehow the holiday and the client deadline had to peacefully co-exist.A quick glance at my Personal Kanban explained my anxiety. I was drowning in a maelstrom of projects that were not only contributing to my WIP but were competing with each other. With personal deadlines set for the 24th and 25th, and a client deadline set for the 29th, seasonal expectations became pressing obligations.This expectation-based WIP extended beyond normal everyday existential overhead. Emotions and expectations combined to create holiday stress. And despite the days nearing closer and closer to the 25th, those holiday task cards piling up were barely making it out of my backlog.Sure, I had those tasks on my Personal Kanban. But things got messy. How could I limit my WIP with tasks sharing deadlines and very few hours to complete them?With less than a week to go, I needed a dedicated board to track the particular workflow for tasks that "came due" on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I need a way to schedule out this process, visualize my progress at every step, and ensure even the tiniest subtask was not overlooked. Because who wants to have to improvise on Christmas morning with a ___ and a ___ because they forgot to do ___? Not me.On the shortest day of the year, my biggest enemy was time. I had a Christmas mission, and so I needed a (very) special "Do" Date-ban.With just the fridge, magnetic hooks, and some holiday note cards, I am now set for the next 3 days. I grouped tasks by their Type (Snowflake/Shopping, Tree/Preparation, Stocking/Cooking) and their Do/Due Date (the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th respectively). The Do/Due dates became my WIP. That let me easily batch projects such as make up guest bedroom, bake struffoli, and brave the line at the post office.So with each day leading up to Christmas Eve, I've given myself a WIP of 3 things for each day - 3 tasks of immediate "value," with itemized subtasks listed inside. Each morning I take the 3 cards off the fridge which correspond with that date, and that's my WIP.Being able to boil down a seemingly insurmountable number of tasks to 3 cards per day tames an otherwise overwhelming task load, and allows me to enjoy the holiday rather than sweat the small stuff.

WIP can be Imposed

Please don't feel bad if you find you've lost control of your WIP.The two rules of Personal Kanban:1. Visualize Your Work2. Limit WIPWith a little practice, #1 becomes easy...second nature, even.Number 2 is, well, pretty much a bitch to master.It is better stated as a goal.  On a good workday, when things are flowing, we can limit our WIP and feel quite good about that.What gets in the way of being able to totally master our WIP is the expectations of others. When people expect things from us, even if we've conveniently de-prioritized them, they let us know: "Where's that report?" "I thought you were coming over to visit today." "When are you going to mail that book to me?"The telephone, instant messaging, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, fax, and just plain old screaming give people ample ways to contribute to the existential overhead that you would just as soon get to later.Often these demands for your attention are highly emotional. People you want to spend more time with but can't. People whom you care about but drive you crazy. People who need legitimate but time-consuming things from you. People who need to work with you but have massively different working styles that will slow you down.This creates a lot of stress.There is little in life we can do about the actions or expectations of others. We talk about expectation management, and can do a fair job of it by being clear about what we can do and when, but people are going make demands of us whether we like it or not.Personal Kanban reacts to this stress by allowing easy re-prioritization of tasks.  You don't think cleaning the garage is all that important.  You wife has a very different opinion.  Her priorities matter, too.This sometimes means that we will need to reprioritize tasks and from time to time these will be tasks already in WIP.Is that good? No.Is it tolerable? Not really.But it is necessary. We simply won't always have the luxury of completion.Again, Personal Kanban is aimed at getting you to visual and understand work's flow - total control is an illusion. Do not be afraid to let reality guide your Personal Kanban.

InfoPak 3 - Personal Kanban Design Patterns: Inspiration to Discover Your Flow

Info Pak3 Personal Kanban Design Patterns

View more

documents

from

Jim Benson

.

Modus Cooperandi is pleased to announce the release of its third Personal Kanban InfoPak. InPersonal Kanban Design Patterns: Inspiration to Discover Your Flowwe present a series of patterns for individuals as well as for small "teams." Among the topics discussed: approaches tailored to specific users (i.e. children and authors) and situations (i.e. non-linear work); ways in which productivity tools such as GTD and Pomodoro extend the value of your Personal Kanban; how "coping mechanisms" such as retrospectives shed light on work patterns that have helped or hindered productivity in the past.For best results and access to links, please download the presentation. As always, please feel free to embed, distribute, and/or comment on this or any of our other InfoPaks.