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- Aug 2, 2017
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What I've been doing lately is using the Kanban board in combination with a written to-do list that blocks out the whole work day.
The kanban board works as the master task-planner, the high level view where I can get a feel for the "shape" of the major goals and projects.
The daily plan gives me a little more structure, reminding me what I need to get done and the best times to do it. I've found that any creative or cognitively-demanding work needs to happen between 7am and noon, for example. The putting-out-fires stuff needs to wait until the hours between 1 and 5pm when I'm not good for anything.
I'm routinely amazed at how forgetful I can be at 6 or 7 in the morning when there's a whole internet full of distractions -- and it doesn't take much of that goofing off to set the whole day off on a bad footing. Opening up the daily plan and knowing I'm booked to do X between the hours of Y and Z takes the decision-making out of the loop.
The daily plan comes in because the Inbox/Todo and Work In Progress lists on the kanban board don't feel "hefty" enough for this. I like to plan the days down to a fine grain and the cards feel too cluttered. I know I could put it in a checklist, but that seems to not really solve the clutter problem and compound things by hiding it behind a card.
The compromise is to link to the daily plan in a card at the top of the Inbox list, which I keep in a document in Dropbox Paper. Each day gets blocked out in advance, on Sunday evenings, and put in the same document. This is handy for reviewing weekly goals and seeing what is and isn't working on a day to day basis.
Moving the kanban cards out of the Inbox and WIP lists while checking off the daily task sheet has been much more productive for me than using the boards by themselves.
Call it redunancy in accountability, I guess. All that matters is that it keeps me on task.
The kanban board works as the master task-planner, the high level view where I can get a feel for the "shape" of the major goals and projects.
The daily plan gives me a little more structure, reminding me what I need to get done and the best times to do it. I've found that any creative or cognitively-demanding work needs to happen between 7am and noon, for example. The putting-out-fires stuff needs to wait until the hours between 1 and 5pm when I'm not good for anything.
I'm routinely amazed at how forgetful I can be at 6 or 7 in the morning when there's a whole internet full of distractions -- and it doesn't take much of that goofing off to set the whole day off on a bad footing. Opening up the daily plan and knowing I'm booked to do X between the hours of Y and Z takes the decision-making out of the loop.
The daily plan comes in because the Inbox/Todo and Work In Progress lists on the kanban board don't feel "hefty" enough for this. I like to plan the days down to a fine grain and the cards feel too cluttered. I know I could put it in a checklist, but that seems to not really solve the clutter problem and compound things by hiding it behind a card.
The compromise is to link to the daily plan in a card at the top of the Inbox list, which I keep in a document in Dropbox Paper. Each day gets blocked out in advance, on Sunday evenings, and put in the same document. This is handy for reviewing weekly goals and seeing what is and isn't working on a day to day basis.
Moving the kanban cards out of the Inbox and WIP lists while checking off the daily task sheet has been much more productive for me than using the boards by themselves.
Call it redunancy in accountability, I guess. All that matters is that it keeps me on task.
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