Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life

Personal Kanban: Mapping Work - Navigating Life

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Jim and Tonianne have written a conversational, wonderful book to help you understand how to move away from todo lists to a system that helps you see your context, your work, and your work in progress. Personal kanban has two rules: Personal kanban is the way I manage my personal project portfolio. Try it for yours. Just wondering — if you are aware of the 2 points that he highlights in the book, is there much else interesting in the book?

Or is it examples of how to apply it in different scenarios? I found the book helpful. I had not totally visualized all my work before. I was not good at managing my WIP, in the same way I am now. I found the book useful. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content As a consultant, I want the flexibility to adapt my work to take advantage of opportunities that might arise in a given week—to write an article or blog post, or to propose a project to a new client.

The two points are: I can maintain a sustainable pace. It gives me the transparency I need to see that the people I need to talk to are—or are not! If the plumber is not calling back, I might make one decision. If a potential client is not calling, I might make another decision. Why are Jim and Tonianne in my head? At least, they are doing a good job there.

Personal kanban has two rules: Personal kanban is the way I manage my personal project portfolio. Try it for yours. Nov 01, Philippe rated it it was amazing Shelves: I have been experimenting with the Personal Kanban approach for a few months now. All in all it constitutes an important improvement over my previous to-do list-driven routine. I feel I am now managing the balance between short term and longer term goals much more effectively. This book was a lucid and rousing introduction to the approach.

Some reviewers are of the opinion that the book I have been experimenting with the Personal Kanban approach for a few months now. Some reviewers are of the opinion that the book could have been much shorter. But I find there is very little fat in this book. It is important to understand the principles behind the approach in order to implement it effectively.

Also the book is only a starting point. Recommended without reserve to all to-do list aficionados. Feb 08, Patty rated it it was amazing Shelves: This book is a must have for anyone looking to become not only more productive, but also effective, and efficient. Personal Kanban Mapping Work Navigating Life will give you the knowledge needed to understand how to use personal kanban effectively, whether you are a student, professional, or in the home, no matter what your age.

You will learn just how Personal Kanban will grow, flow, and evolve just as naturally as you do. This book will be a constant companion. From front cover, to footnotes, This book is a must have for anyone looking to become not only more productive, but also effective, and efficient. From front cover, to footnotes, from index to content, this book is a winner. Jul 27, Kars rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is the best personal productivity book I've read since Getting Things Done.

It is my new favourite.

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I really like the emphasis on sticking to a few simple principles and designing and continuously improving your own system around them. Aug 08, Gary B rated it really liked it Shelves: Jim and Tonianne describe a simple, accessible method of managing workflow. Parts of the book made me laugh out loud as they describe situations they've experienced.

The approach is certainly simple but allows for individual tinkering to suit different types of projects, teams and workflows. As its simplest there are two rules: Visualise your work - by writing out tasks on cards or paper and sticking these on a kanban Japanese for sign board. This allows us to see all of our tasks so we can de Jim and Tonianne describe a simple, accessible method of managing workflow. This allows us to see all of our tasks so we can determine relationships and priorities.

Book Review: Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life

Limit your work in process. Jim suggests we have 3 tasks on the go any any one time. More than that and we run the risk of confusion and inertia. One aspect that really resonated with is that of "existential overhead" - that foginess and inertia that develops when we have too much junk in our heads at any moment. The kanban board allows us to clear some of that fog or overhead - similar to a brain dump.

Wish I had checked the reviews more thoroughly: If you're basically familiar with the idea of a Kanban board for managing work, the entire content of the book could fit on one good 8. Jan 18, Dan Slimmon rated it really liked it Shelves: I prefer lightweight frameworks to the Franklin-Covey behemoth, so a flexible system with only 2 hard and fast rules 1: The appendix lists a few variations people have applied to the basic framework, but I would've liked more detail on those.

Oct 15, Haider Al-Mosawi rated it really liked it. This book describes how the practice of kanban can be applied to personal projects and small teams. I would highly recommend that you look into kanban and to start experimenting with it. Kanban is simply the visualization of your tasks, and commonly uses a whiteboard with post-it notes. A very basic structure is to divide your whiteboard into 3 columns: Backlog Doing Done The book replaces "Backlog" with Ready, and suggests keeping a separate backlog elsewhere Using post-it notes, you populat This book describes how the practice of kanban can be applied to personal projects and small teams.

Backlog Doing Done The book replaces "Backlog" with Ready, and suggests keeping a separate backlog elsewhere Using post-it notes, you populate your backlog with tasks you need to get done. When you decide to work on a task, you move it to Doing and work on it I have a post-it note with "Review Personal Kanban book" in my Doing column as I write this. Once you've completed your task, you move it to Done and work on the next task. The book stresses on the importance of keeping your kanban practice flexible and that the system has only 2 rules: You can add additional columns for greater clarity such as This Week and Today.

You can even map out an entire workflow, if the work you do requires the same process e. There are lots of useful insights in the book, but it loses a star for being unnecessarily verbose. I would also recommend you check out the following 2 Slideshare presentations to get you started quickly with kanban: I started using a kanban board yesterday, and it feels incredible. I've customized my board and will continue to experiment with it in the days ahead.

So far I've added to Doing: I've also added a table to Done that indicates the number of pomodori i. Looks like it's time to move another task to the Done column. Oct 29, Jenny Reading Envy rated it liked it Shelves: This is a decent read on how to apply the Kanban system to your personal workflow, especially considering that when I first heard about Kanban and went to look for books on it, all I could find came out of lean manufacturing. Most helpful in this book are the two simple rules - visualize your work and limit your work-in-progress.

The second most useful part of the book are the examples of how people have made personal Kanban work for them. Less useful were the chapters trying to make Kanban differ This is a decent read on how to apply the Kanban system to your personal workflow, especially considering that when I first heard about Kanban and went to look for books on it, all I could find came out of lean manufacturing. Less useful were the chapters trying to make Kanban different from Covey or to-do lists. The authors attempt to villainize both, perhaps in an effort to make you think their system is the only system, but I use Kanban alongside Covey thinking and to-do lists and don't find them to be in conflict at all.

Those two chapters were unnecessary, as were several others that merely repeated the concepts and the fuzzy illustrations found earlier in the book. Still, I'm a fan of Kanban and use it to manage my group of Outreach librarians, and wanted to see what they had to say about using it for personal workflow. In the end they do dip into group workflow as well, especially near the end. I liked the idea of using Kanban to handle an emergency situation, and that is something I'll file away for the next situation that damages library materials.

Mar 03, Jeff rated it it was amazing. Personal Kanban is the McGuffy Reader for anyone wanting to work effectively in the current age. The gems within this book are the simple practices that make the central concepts real. Personal Kanban gives you practices to get working more effectively right now, and puts you on the path to improving how you work every day. Nov 02, Bougiefever added it. I have started using Kanban for my personal life after using it professionally, and I have to say it is a system that works. There are so many small things I have remembered to do that were on my list that I would have forgotten.

Kanban works for your personal life because it is a low-friction planner. You don't put a lot of work into maintenance of your to-do list. You can have any number of items in your to-do list without feeling overwhelmed by it. You simply bring over the things you are goi I have started using Kanban for my personal life after using it professionally, and I have to say it is a system that works. You simply bring over the things you are going to work on immediately, and prioritize the rest.

As I progressed reading this text, I had a question gnawing away in my mind. Isn't all this common sense? Why do we need a textbook to explain these to us? But then common sense isn't that common. And as the book itself rightly suggests, we often loose sight of the bigger picture.

It almost always puts things into perspective and puts us back on track. Jul 06, Shaun rated it really liked it. A little too hard on the persuasive and emotional aspect of kanban I was familiar with kanban already and learned several new approaches with it. Check it out If you're looking to kickstart some old skills or learn a new one. Jul 08, CodeBlue rated it really liked it.

I had been introduced to Kanban before reading this book. I had been intrigued and tried to use it for my personal life. The concepts made sense to me - figure out what is important and how to get things done, populate the list of things to get done, limit the amount of work I am doing at once, and pull work when I need more. It worked pretty well, I was productive and that little dopamine hit every time I moved something to Done felt awesome. Combined with the Pomodoro Technique and I thought I could take on anything.

For me though, this started to break down rapidly when I tried to add too many tasks to a single board, or when tasks would be too large and would get stuck. Which was disheartening to say the least, here I thought I had the holy grail of the Matrix and it stopped working for me after I had drunk the Kool-Aid. To some degree this could be argued that this was something Kanban was identifying for me, and I would agree. But at the same time it did not help me solve it either.

I searched for answers. I even tried to come up with my own solutions. The closest of which was to create a roll-up task. The issue I had with this was the double management of two boards and not knowing how to move this roll-up task through my value stream. Another idea to mitigate this was to create completely separate boards which would be switched through when I had completed what I needed to on the current board.

This lost me visibility and introduced the possibility of introducing the same task on multiple boards without even knowing it. And my final issue was with repetitive tasks - since they were filling up my board but were also something I wanted to track. These were exactly the kinds of problems I was looking for resolutions to from Personal Kanban - as well as reinforcing and rebuilding the habit of using a Kanban board correctly. You know, from the people who created it. The first chapter explains the basics of Kanban, how it came to be realized, and why it operates the way it does.

Interesting information, but nothing theoretically ground-breaking for me. Except perhaps, that the authors are not going to tell you how to use Kanban. That it has to be customized for every need. Well that complicates things.. The next few chapters go back to explaining things about Kanban. The more advanced things.

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Things like flow, work-in-progress, cadence, productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, prioritization, and how to measure these values. It tries to explain why these things are beneficial and key parts to Kanban. It even has a section explaining how to-do lists are the devil. Useful information to be sure. But the real gold-mine, at least for me, showed up in Appendix A which covers various Kanban Design Patterns used for different projects. All of the approaches in the Appendix acknowledge the issues I had with Kanban and tried to provide a means to overcome them.

I still struggle with it a little today, but at least I have a resource I can reference that gives me a reminder that firstly I am not the only person experiencing these growing pains, but also reinforcing the design patterns that can help overcome them. After all, there are only two set rules in Personal Kanban.

Nov 26, Barkingstars rated it it was ok. This book did not work for me.

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