How I started organizing myself with personal kanban?

Every idea is born in frustration... 

It's late. I don't fancy looking at my todo list.. It's too much. Birds started singing outside. 'Yet another line to make this f*#ker pass... '. 'There always will be something to do' like Fred says. But how much is enough? Information, data, questions, answers... and again questions, answers. What if there is no answers? What if You have to inject more 'todos'? What if something gets delayed? What? What? What?...

Hopeless....

After traversing through few books on 'making things done faster' there is more confusion. Thinking frameworks, management frameworks, whatever frameworks... The world gets more complicated day by day. And just somewhere on the back of my head something is lauging and whispering:

 'Individuals and interactions over processes and tools'.

 Yeah right!....

It's only a board

Somewhere there is a tool. Tool which will help me (I hope) sort the situations to the point where I can deal with them. Apparently I know it.. It's a board with diagonal lines. Some headings and I can just draw it and use it. Cool...

How to do it?

I got some cheap wallpaper from a pound shop. Got some marker pens and post cards. I've cut wallpaper to cover the wall near my desk. Sticked it to the wall with self-stick tape. I drew 4 diagonal lines to create columns for post cards.

The columns are like stages..

I got 5 columns:

1. Awaiting column - This column keeps any number of items prioritized from the top to the bottom

2. Todo - This column stores actual cue of tasks which I've chosen to solve asap. I restricted this column to 5 tasks. The brain tactics here are to not get overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done

3. Doing - Column contains only task/tasks I am performing at the moment. Let's say You got a washing to be done(which is done by washing machine), program to be analysed or tested (which is done by computer) and some simple issue to solve. It counts three. and this is the number of tasks I explicitly allow in this column

4. Awaiting - This columns represents all the awaiting items. This column helps me track the problem which depends on someone or something else. This column is great to catch bottlenecks in the real life and at work

5. Done - All We love this column to be full....

To Measure or not to Measure?

The above looks pretty easy, huh? It is... All the sticky notes done. I got a stream of everyday or weekly tasks going through. It's much easier to manage something I can just write down, stick and move across the board. It's almost like a board game. Kanban can be used to measure what are bottlenecks and where they appear. This way You can easily trace items which won't move as easy as others... This measures helps me optimize the task flow...

Where I am going next?

I just briefly described how I use my personal kanban. There is more space to use for this simple and effective tool. I like the idea of post cards sticked to the board, they may be transferable as well, but.... There is a tool called Trello. Is pretty cool. It's available for all devices I use. Let's give it a go... Having said that I am leaving my board on it's own place, available to stick a card in...