DONE COLUMN: How Does Your Work Make You Feel?

Done Column

When we work, we spend our most precious resources: our time, our energy, and our emotion. Each task we complete takes a little bit of us and we’d like to think that time was not only productive, but impactful.But we are so busy, so distracted, so overwhelmed that we finish one task and move right on to the next. The treadmill. The rat race.All too often, we bring this home with us. Home tasks become just more in the endless stream of numbing work.With your Personal Kanban, you can work your way out of this by asking a few simple questions:

• What work makes me happy?

• What work does not?

By simply augmenting your DONE column with three or more simple sections that note what tasks you enjoyed, which were merely okay, and which were upsetting. You can add more gradations (we’ve seen ones with mushroom cloud columns).

Make explicit what you enjoy and what you do not. Then you can create strategies to even your work out. Enhance work that energizes you - that’s the work that gives you the energy (and the hope!) to get through the harder stuff.

Clean Up Your Backlog

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Does your READY column look like a junk drawer?  

Do you have tasks in there that you are holding onto from six months ago that say “Urgent!” (and have since the day they were created)?

Guess what? You’re learning something about your work.

We have a lot of urgent tasks that strangely don’t get done and no one gets hurt.

Busy-ness is bad for business

We might miss an opportunity or need to do something different in the future, but we don’t complete a lot of tasks we, ourselves, would describe as urgent.In the first post in this series, I mentioned that at Modus our board had built up an unhealthy backlog. It was gigantic.Why did this happen?1. We’re busy! Tonianne and I were traveling constantly, forming partnerships, coming up with new products, working on existing products, keeping notes about things to blog about, juggling demands from clients, and running a business. We were both constantly adding to the board. So much so, Tonianne at one point created a backlog just for her because she couldn’t find things on the board. Busy-ness was becoming bad for business.

2. No custodian No one was in charge of cleaning out the backlog, so even though we are both focused on the board, we became focused on completion - but not hygiene.

3. Focused on the new work As I mentioned we were focused on completion. We would put new urgent work into the board and do it immediately, while old tasks just got older. We needed to maintain a focus, again, on board hygieneSo what to do?Well, we can either clean them up or work them out.Cleaning I took on the role of custodian and started clearing out old, poorly described, or simply unnecessary.  After that, and the backlog regrooming from the previous post, we were able to see all our work and begin to actually complete. When discussing the board, we now talk about old tickets and why certain tickets are there.Batching If there are tickets that really are important, but haven’t been done, we might suggest a pomodoro or two to focus on completing just those tasks, clean them off the board, and move on.This is important because often tickets that languish are of a certain type. They involve writing tedious emails or calling people on the phone, for example. Batching those up and completing them also is a good way to get them out of the backlog.This is the third post in the series - Are You Just Doing Things.  You can read the previous post here.Written in Mesa, Arizona

Categorizing Your Backlog

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Your backlog is hope. Your backlog is pain.  

Your backlog holds all the projects, tasks, demands, desires, and expectations you have and the world has for you.The problem is, today’s apparent emergencies are tomorrow’s waste-of-my-time.If we are focused on completion, we don’t want to complete tasks.We want to complete products.If you find you are completing tasks, but not products ... try making your backlog explicitly show what you need to do to complete the products those tasks make up.

Unorganized Backlog

This board is a typical cluttered backlog. You might be able to see that tasks belong to specific projects, but they are jumbled and incoherent. While each of these tasks might be options we can exercise, the complexity of our decision of what to pull next is directly related to the number of tasks in the READY column and our inability to quickly see what each task is.So .. let’s try to build an explicit BACKLOG before the READY column:

Explicit Backlog

Here we see a board with a categorized backlog. We hold work in the backlog until it’s READY to be done. Only then can we move it into the READY column. Note here that the READY column is limited to seven tasks.So now we’ve split out our work and we can see very clearly what projects we have, how much work is in each, and what we are currently spending our time on.This board is much easier to interpret.In this example, we can see that we are split between marketing, general work, and course creation.This is the second post in the series - Are You Just Doing Things?  You can read the first post here.Written in Mesa, Arizona

Personal Kanban for a Well Oiled Machine

It is no small secret that you can’t do everything yourself. A machine’s gears only work well with all the parts of the machine when they are well oiled. I like to think that my family works in this way. Why? Because we use Personal Kanban to keep our well-oiled machine running.Here are a few ways my family has used Personal Kanban.When I am entertaining, making a special recipe or meal, getting ready for an event, or going on a trip, I will make a kitchen counter kanban.

Kitchen Counter Kanban

When cooking or baking, as I add an ingredient to my dish I will move the post-it into the appropriate column. Often when I am baking, I easily lose track of what I have added to the recipe, this helps me not to lose track.  I have also added tasks corresponding with the meal, such as setting the table, chilling the wine, etc.  When we are getting ready to travel I will put everything right on the counter that I need to do both for myself and my family in regards to packing, confirming reservations and acquiring tickets.

When using a Kanban that involves my whole family when setting it up I take this approach -  I ask each member of my family what color post-it's they want their tasks to be on. This is because I wanted each of them to be able to take one glance at the board and know exactly what each of us is doing at any given time, and I wanted them to be a color that makes them happy.  In the past I have liked to use the refrigerator, but the post-its sometimes wouldn’t stick to the door, so I decided on the cabinet that is most used, the dish cabinet. (No one can eat without going into this cabinet!)

Family Kanban on the kitchen cabinet

My husband chose the blue, my daughter the purple and I was the pink color.  I added the color post-it each of us chose with our names at the top above the waiting lanes.  This worked out great because I didn’t need to add names to the individual tasks, just what each task was, and we all knew immediately whose task it was. I even decided to add the day the task was going on, that way when I filled the waiting lane I could put every task up in chronological order, it made it easier to wade through.

Work flow on the family kanban

By Tuesday we were already in a good flow. What I love most about doing a family kanban is the fact that it involves everyone. While I was away my daughter and husband moved their tasks and kept each other in check. It’s like I have a safety net in place, it ensures that we are working together as a family (even if one of us is traveling). I’m not worried that my daughter won’t get to her activities on time. I know it’s getting accomplished.

Each time we use a new kanban in our home we learn and evolve as a family.  It adds to our family happiness factor.  In the past my daughter has even left her appreciation for our family Kanban right in the middle of the board.

Happiness on the family Kanban

I sleep better at night when I’m traveling knowing my family members have the visual reminders of important tasks that can’t get overlooked. This is also something that even though we are busy, going in all different directions, we work on together as a family all week long. Each kanban board is a direct reflection of our family, where we are all at together in our lives, and it brings us closer together.This post originally appeared on the Nothing is Out of Reach Blog.

Personal Kanban at NYC's Agile Learning Center

The Agile Learning Center at Manhattan Free School is designed to put young people in the driver’s seat of their learning and living – giving them the same opportunity and responsibility that we have as adults – to create their own lives.Each morning, we begin with a standup meeting. Everyone takes a turn stating their intentions for the day and making requests for any support they may need. At the end of the day, we come back for another standup meeting to reflect. Did we fulfill our intentions? If so, how? If not – why? What might we do differently tomorrow based on our awareness of today?This daily cycle of creation and reflection produces a powerful feedback loop, providing us clear information about the choices we make and the results of those choices. Between the bookends of this daily cycle, kanban boards are used to support mindfulness in our decision-making process.After morning standup, we use kanban boards to make our intentions visible. Speaking intentions is a start, but making them visible in physical space takes our awareness and commitment to the next level. Now we have a self-created roadmap for what’s possible.

A student kanban

From there, students practice prioritizing by surveying the possibilities for their day and moving things into READY or “Get Set”. What do I really want to do today? Who could I work or play with? What will nurture my body, mind, and spirit? A nine year-old may not be using these words or asking these specific questions, but the kanban process has them considering all of these factors in their own way.Next, we get to experience the power of making what’s possible a reality by pulling the selected intention into DOING or “Go”. ACTION! Deep engagement ensues. When we take the time to make conscious choices, we tend to be more focused, present, and committed to our actions, because we are taking ownership over the whole process.

Finish line on the student Kanban

When an intention is fulfilled, a task completed, or a curiosity explored, we come back to move the story across the finish line. Crossing the finish line does not mean that the story is over and done with. However, it does mark what we have created, and gives us the opportunity to reflect, assess, and constantly improve.

Wall of student kanbans

The kanban board is an extremely effective tool for breaking through our automatic thinking – informing ourselves of the past, visualizing the future, and bringing our attention to the present.Agile Learning Centers is an open-sourced education model for the 21st Century. Learn more about the very first Agile Learning Center at AgileLearn.org