In this blog post I look at the idea of a "daily or day-of-the-week WIP" in the context of a personal week. Some of this takes its cues from the Personal Kanban book [PKB], which discusses things like sequestering, "large project" approach with "roll up" tasks - basically, techniques to visualise recurring personal tasks and recurring work generated from on-going projects.
Perhaps the biggest idea I've gotten from kanban so far is the importance of visualisation or representing your situation. It's hard to start thinking about WIP or fine-tuning things until you've had time to do this and evolve it a bit. So here goes...
The 2 rules of personal kanban are:
This was an interesting exercise as I realised just how much I tend to jump around from one thing to another. Having a WIP limit on my work forces me to focus and it forces me to think about what I want to do next.
There are things I really don't want to record like brushing my teeth - that makes no sense. And I feel like there are definitely things I'd rather leave "unstructured". But there are other periodic things which are things I want to do but which don't have any kind of immediate goal or end state but which I'm keen to track in some way. Things like going for a run for instance - especially in winter, when I need to motivate myself. Or doing some weight training or doing some music exercises because I want to train my ear. These are regular things that I want to coordinate but I don't want to drag them repeatedly into a "done" column.
The appendix A of PKB turns out to be the most interesting part from my perspective because the authors discuss some real case studies where recurring work was important. One case involves handling both a training regime and a regular study schedule. In these cases additional "value streams" or swim lanes (grids or additional boards of some sort) were created in addition to the main board with the express purpose of visualising the recurring work and tracking it.
I can plan big goals and projects; prioritize them, put them into a backlog, split them up and manage in a semi-scrum like fashion.
But my initial attempts to visualise the recurring aspects of my life involved having a daily column or a weekly column and using things like trello checklists or cards that recorded tallies for particular activities. One of the limitations I was hitting was my desire to use more grid-like visualisations (ones that had both rows and columns) to explore better ways to do this rather than the columnar approach that trello provides.
So for running, I create 2 cards that initially go in my "try to do" column one for each run. Let's also say I want to target doing 3 weight training sessions per week if I can possibly squeeze this in. And maybe I want to do 2 music reading exercises during the week as well.
So:
Next to my days of the week is my "everyday / tally" column where I have a small number of cards that are so important to me I want to track or do them every day. This reduces clutter on my week day columns since I don't have to create a card for each day of the week.
And suddenly... I have a dashboard; a gauge (or set of gauges??) showing my week. Each day of the week on my board has a WIP limit of sorts; I can see if I've got too much on any given day. I can drag things around and make trade-offs as unexpected things happen during the course of the week, and I can prioritise my day, eg "can I try to do this before I go to work" etc .
I say "inversion" because prior to building my weekly board, my main focus was my backlog board with a single WIP (doing) column. Now my primary dashboard is my weekly board with a column for each day of the week forming a "daily WIP" in conjunction with the "everyday / tally" column. Is it a WIP in the kanban sense? Well, maybe it roughly maps to the idea of a "today" column as proposed in the Personal Kanban book. When I'm ready to do one of my blue "work" cards that I've scheduled for the current day, I can switch to my backlog board to easily see and review what my current focus / WIP for non-recurring work is.
My aim is to build up a "rhythm" between my recurring "try to do's" and my non-recurring "work" items whilst fitting all the other recurring stuff in as necessary.
The PKB book mentions that small tasks can be periodically rounded up and "sweated out" to help you clear out your backlog - these tasks are dubbed "ankle biters". Small recurring things for me are handled by my weekly board. I've rounded up the other small non-recurring stuff into a mini-backlog on my weekly board so that I can drag items from there to a day of the week as and when I think I can do them - I could even create a couple of "sweat-out" cards if I wanted. [Actually, I've put the ankle biters backlog list back on my backlog board next to my main backlog. It's a way to weed out smaller things from my backlog.]
So, my backlog board is allowed to focus on the bigger things I'm trying to do with my life and my weekly board is the engine I need to tune to help do that as best I can given all my other constraints.
Is my week a "value stream"? Maybe, hopefully, I come out at the end of it a little better and a little closer to what I want to do. For me, Sunday is a good day to review the week, look how far my "-- done --" sliders got, think about which days were good or bad, whether I hit my everyday / tally targets, what rhythms or discoveries I made about how to do things better. There's usually a relationship between my (recurring) try-to-dos and my "work" items as they represent things that are significant to me, as well as rhythms around the more humdrum stuff I have to do.
Perhaps the biggest idea I've gotten from kanban so far is the importance of visualisation or representing your situation. It's hard to start thinking about WIP or fine-tuning things until you've had time to do this and evolve it a bit. So here goes...
It started with...
My situation and context for this article: I'm always trying to do stuff outside of my day job for one reason or another, and I'm interested in how to get the most out of myself given such a huge constraint. So I started trying out personal kanban after reading the personal kanban book a couple of weeks ago.The 2 rules of personal kanban are:
- visualise your work
- limit your work-in-progress (WIP) (aka "don't multitask or avoid incessantly switching between (unfinished) things")
This was an interesting exercise as I realised just how much I tend to jump around from one thing to another. Having a WIP limit on my work forces me to focus and it forces me to think about what I want to do next.
What to do with recurring things....
As I was reading through the first part of the book however I started wondering about periodic or recurring things.There are things I really don't want to record like brushing my teeth - that makes no sense. And I feel like there are definitely things I'd rather leave "unstructured". But there are other periodic things which are things I want to do but which don't have any kind of immediate goal or end state but which I'm keen to track in some way. Things like going for a run for instance - especially in winter, when I need to motivate myself. Or doing some weight training or doing some music exercises because I want to train my ear. These are regular things that I want to coordinate but I don't want to drag them repeatedly into a "done" column.
The appendix A of PKB turns out to be the most interesting part from my perspective because the authors discuss some real case studies where recurring work was important. One case involves handling both a training regime and a regular study schedule. In these cases additional "value streams" or swim lanes (grids or additional boards of some sort) were created in addition to the main board with the express purpose of visualising the recurring work and tracking it.
Finding a better visualisation...
So, a week into my trello pkb experience I started thinking... How do I track these little regular things I want to do alongside the bigger projects and things I want to take on... all outside of my regular job?I can plan big goals and projects; prioritize them, put them into a backlog, split them up and manage in a semi-scrum like fashion.
But my initial attempts to visualise the recurring aspects of my life involved having a daily column or a weekly column and using things like trello checklists or cards that recorded tallies for particular activities. One of the limitations I was hitting was my desire to use more grid-like visualisations (ones that had both rows and columns) to explore better ways to do this rather than the columnar approach that trello provides.
The weekly board...
This is what I came up with (still in trello), after allowing my thinking to evolve over about a week...- I created a new board I call the "weekly board" separate to my backlog board
- I created a column for each day of the week (a list in trello) - something I had seen in one of the case studies at the back of the PKB book.
- I added an "everyday / tally" column for (a small number of) things that were daily that I wanted to track or tally over weekly or even more extended periods (one way might be to use a trello checklist inside a card and periodically resetting it).
- recurring list containing recurring things, things that are weekly or less regular than weekly;
- and a list I call the "try-to-do" list, also a list of recurring things which I'll discuss shortly
- (An example of another column I have is a "calendar" list; it lists things like particular meetups I want to try to go to or at least be aware of during the week etc)
So for running, I create 2 cards that initially go in my "try to do" column one for each run. Let's also say I want to target doing 3 weight training sessions per week if I can possibly squeeze this in. And maybe I want to do 2 music reading exercises during the week as well.
So:
- I create the requisite number of cards for each of these activities and have them all start in my "try to do" column
- Then I push these cards onto my weekly board - onto one of the days of the week.
Next to my days of the week is my "everyday / tally" column where I have a small number of cards that are so important to me I want to track or do them every day. This reduces clutter on my week day columns since I don't have to create a card for each day of the week.
Getting a weekly rhythm - the engine
The final inversion of my PKB experience occurred when I created some additional "try to do" cards explicitly for the purpose of doing "work". These "work" cards are placeholders to indicate time spent doing "non-recurring" stuff, at the moment each one is roughly equivalent to an hour. I push these onto my day columns along with my recurring cards. I colour my "work" cards blue in trello so they stick out as points where I hope to do a solid block of (non-recurring) work. Knowing where I can put these work cards and how many I can sustain on top of my regular week is one of the key things I want to visualise.And suddenly... I have a dashboard; a gauge (or set of gauges??) showing my week. Each day of the week on my board has a WIP limit of sorts; I can see if I've got too much on any given day. I can drag things around and make trade-offs as unexpected things happen during the course of the week, and I can prioritise my day, eg "can I try to do this before I go to work" etc .
I say "inversion" because prior to building my weekly board, my main focus was my backlog board with a single WIP (doing) column. Now my primary dashboard is my weekly board with a column for each day of the week forming a "daily WIP" in conjunction with the "everyday / tally" column. Is it a WIP in the kanban sense? Well, maybe it roughly maps to the idea of a "today" column as proposed in the Personal Kanban book. When I'm ready to do one of my blue "work" cards that I've scheduled for the current day, I can switch to my backlog board to easily see and review what my current focus / WIP for non-recurring work is.
My aim is to build up a "rhythm" between my recurring "try to do's" and my non-recurring "work" items whilst fitting all the other recurring stuff in as necessary.
The PKB book mentions that small tasks can be periodically rounded up and "sweated out" to help you clear out your backlog - these tasks are dubbed "ankle biters". Small recurring things for me are handled by my weekly board. I've rounded up the other small non-recurring stuff into a mini-backlog on my weekly board so that I can drag items from there to a day of the week as and when I think I can do them - I could even create a couple of "sweat-out" cards if I wanted. [Actually, I've put the ankle biters backlog list back on my backlog board next to my main backlog. It's a way to weed out smaller things from my backlog.]
So, my backlog board is allowed to focus on the bigger things I'm trying to do with my life and my weekly board is the engine I need to tune to help do that as best I can given all my other constraints.
Sprinting on (non-recurring) work?
Knowing how my week is going to look when I plan out my weekly board also means I can look to gauge how much (non-recurring) "work" (on my backlog board) I can try achieve in a week and on which day. So I corral some high-priority cards on my backlog board into a "week" column. This maybe is a little bit like creating a scrum sprint inside kanban. This gives me a weekly focus or goal, it makes me think more sharply about what I'm trying to do with my blue non-recurring placeholder "work" cards on my weekly board.Every gauge needs a dial - using a slider card....
For each day of the week on my weekly board I also have a "slider" card called "-- done --" which starts at the top of the list. As I complete tasks I drag this slider card down so that only cards not done are below it. This gives me a nice little indicator of where I'm at during the day, and a visual indicator of how much I got done on previous days and what didn't get done... plus I get a small dopamine hit for pushing things above that "--done--" card :)Is my week a "value stream"? Maybe, hopefully, I come out at the end of it a little better and a little closer to what I want to do. For me, Sunday is a good day to review the week, look how far my "-- done --" sliders got, think about which days were good or bad, whether I hit my everyday / tally targets, what rhythms or discoveries I made about how to do things better. There's usually a relationship between my (recurring) try-to-dos and my "work" items as they represent things that are significant to me, as well as rhythms around the more humdrum stuff I have to do.
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