If you haven’t heard about Kanban before (which many of our productivity enthusiasts had not, so you’re not alone!) started as a lean manufacturing process by Taiichi Ohno. It has since branched off into a process management and improvement method used by many in the productivity community (especially in the Lean, Six Sigma and Agile communities). In practical terms, with Personal Kanban, you create a visual process management system (Kanban means “billboard” in Japanese) for what you’re going to do, what you're currently working on, and how much you want to do (or what’s been done). There are many tools out there that help manage these kinds of boards and different styles for facilitating the boards. That's what we discuss in this latest episode of ProductivityCast!

N.B. Ray mentioned mistakenly kanban was developed in the 1960s/70s but it was actually developed in the 1940s/50s.

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In this Cast | Personal Kanban

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Personal Kanban

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Tonianne DeMaria Barry and Jim Benson

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll

Rules of Personal Kanban

Visualize your workLimit your work-in-progress

Post-It Notes

Trello

MeisterTask

Wekan

Microsoft Planner

Notion

Being Productive podcast hosted by Art Gelwicks

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Francis Wade 0:23I'm Francis Wade.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26 And we are back this week with an episode on a topic that I really enjoy talking about. Because it's such an interesting flavor of a productivity system. What we're going to do today is we're going to talk about personal kanban, which is both a methodology and a book very similar to getting things done by David Allen. And so Personal Kanban mapping work navigating life as a book by Tony and Mario Berry and Jim Benson. And the history of it is actually found in combine the TGO, no lean manufacturing process that was developed back in I believe, the 60s or 70s, I could be wrong about that. But the idea here is that it has since branched off into a process management and proven methodology. The ideas behind Kanban have since branched off into process management and improvement methods used by many in the productivity community, especially in the Lean Six Sigma and agile communities. And the development in practical terms. Kanban is in essence, a visual process management system. And Kanban actually means Billboard and Japanese. And so that's what you're what you're going to do, what you're currently working on, and what you want to do or what hasn't been done being these visual boards. And so you're moving things along the process. And in essence, you're moving things forward. There are many tools out there that can help with these, and we'll talk about some of them. But today's goal is first to talk then about personal kanban. And that of course is then how you take kanban, the kanban methodology of of lean manufacturing process and the process management improvement methodologies into your personal productivity world. And so what we're going to do is we're going to talk a little bit about personal kanban, we're going to talk about how to use kanban in your own productivity system. Some of its benefits some of its, its its ways of working. And then we will talk about how to get started with personal kanban if you've never actually used to kanban board before, and what some things you could do to take your personal kanban to the next level, if you have used to kanban board in the past. Let's start off with the very basic what is personal kanban, personal kanban actually has only two rules associated with it. And so the idea here is that you visualize your work. And number two is that you limit your work in progress. But two rules and personal combine, it makes it very simple. And this allows you to be able to create a level of control of your work so that you can then visualize what the right things are that need to be done, then plan for what is going to be done in very, very quick fashion.

Art Gelwicks 3:13 It's interesting because the term kanban can throw a lot of people off. And when I when I try to explain to people, what kanban is, I always swap the term off with post it notes. Because that's basically as complex as it gets the the methodology works it just as well with post it notes as it does with any technology solution. And that can often take a lot of the fear and uncertainty and doubt away from approaching something like this.

Augusto Pinaud 3:38

I like that that approach of call it post it notes instead. That's that's a pretty brilliant one. For most people. I agree with you, when you use words like combat, people get confused. It is or confused may not be the right word. But he's like, that's a weird thing. I don't know exactly what it means. So therefore Let's not talk about

Art Gelwicks 3:55

Yeah, the end. The unfamiliarity of the term can really hurt people's adoption it,

Francis Wade 4:00

I guess I comment it from the from a, I guess a different perspective, because it was a topic I was taught as an industrial engineer, as an undergraduate. So I've been using the were familiar with the concept ever since since I was I guess, 20 years old, 21 years old, or whatever. And I was really surprised to see it come over into the personal productivity world. But I know it from I know it and I've used it from from ever since I was an undergrad.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:29 So what are the benefits of visualizing one's work in playing to the first rule of personal kanban? Why should one visualize their work?

Art Gelwicks 4:40 Well, right away, one of the things that I recommend for people when they're doing that is you're going to surprise yourself by how much work you actually have. kanban, by its nature, because it is either physically or visually tied. When you start to capture all of these things that you've got going on. Unlike a do list or unlike a project plan, combine really forces you to recognize the amount of work that you have on your plate. And that right there is often overwhelming to people, because they see all this stuff. And they realize that they probably haven't even captured all of it. But it is so important to be able to truly have a mental images to the amount of work that you're trying to handle. Specially personally, because we never give ourselves an opportunity to do that. at work. Yes, we have to, you know, report to other people what our work level is. But personally, the only person we have to report this to is ourselves. And often that's the way we procrastinate and hide is to not have an overall perspective as the amount of work that's on our plate.

Francis Wade 5:45

Over in the manufacturing world. The benefit of big benefit of using combine is that it gives you a an easy give a group a team an easy snapshot, because typically the combine borders on a wall somewhere. So everyone was playing the same, same sort of playbook. And when they could see how much roughly how much work there was to do by just looking at a glance. And if something was off, someone could raise a flag and say no, that's not correct, because this and that on the other and it would bring immediately bring everyone into the same space. It was. And if you're in a team environment and team is working on projects at the project level, then it can be really useful because then the entire team can agree yes, these are the items that we're working on. Again, it's better if it's visual, and if it's on a wall. But it can also work on a on a website or on a page or as an app. But this the the group visualization that that sort of that that was a big benefit map back most still is in the manufacturing world.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:49

And it creates a sense of accountability. I think, you know, if you see what needs to be done and who is responsible for that thing to be done, then it creates a sense of accountability, which is really great.

Art Gelwicks 7:00

provides you the opportunity to say no, or at least the supporting data to be able to say no, often you'll get hung up on there's this much stuff going on, can you do this? Can you do this,