Personal kanban and process-oriented work...
So several weeks have passed since I wrote my last post about doing personal kanban and about using a weekly board and pulling cards on to this board.
The big thing is I'm still using this system - which is a big deal for me. I've been going at it for many weeks and I feel I'm unlikely to discard it any time soon. But things have changed (evolved) quite a bit...
The biggest thing I've noticed is that an activity that I had earmarked as an everyday one, that I would do for as little 10 minutes in some cases and record in a tally next to my weekly board, very quickly became part of my daily habit. It was really "sticking". And it led me to this realisation: If you want to get good at something, you should do it regularly.
Mind-blowing I know, but I think it bears examining more carefully here. I'd wager that small, continual, regular sessions learning a skill beat longer and irregular ones any time, though this might depend on the activity you are doing and also the way in which you spend that time. At any rate if you're trying to build a skill that's really important to you, work on it either everyday or very regularly (think "recurring") even if it's for a short period. [Note: my context for writing this is that I am trying to make efficient use of the time I have outside of regular work and other commitments that I already have.]
How does this fit in with (personal) kanban and WIP? I think for the moment I have to make a distinction between activities that have a recurring nature, that don't easily fit into a backlog, and other activities that are more discrete, task-like in nature and which do. That distinction is the difference between
So picking something to work on everyday or with similar level of regularity is quite a significant thing.
The big thing is I'm still using this system - which is a big deal for me. I've been going at it for many weeks and I feel I'm unlikely to discard it any time soon. But things have changed (evolved) quite a bit...
The biggest thing I've noticed is that an activity that I had earmarked as an everyday one, that I would do for as little 10 minutes in some cases and record in a tally next to my weekly board, very quickly became part of my daily habit. It was really "sticking". And it led me to this realisation: If you want to get good at something, you should do it regularly.
Mind-blowing I know, but I think it bears examining more carefully here. I'd wager that small, continual, regular sessions learning a skill beat longer and irregular ones any time, though this might depend on the activity you are doing and also the way in which you spend that time. At any rate if you're trying to build a skill that's really important to you, work on it either everyday or very regularly (think "recurring") even if it's for a short period. [Note: my context for writing this is that I am trying to make efficient use of the time I have outside of regular work and other commitments that I already have.]
How does this fit in with (personal) kanban and WIP? I think for the moment I have to make a distinction between activities that have a recurring nature, that don't easily fit into a backlog, and other activities that are more discrete, task-like in nature and which do. That distinction is the difference between
- process-oriented work, and
- goal-oriented work
This is the difference that is described in Thomas Sterner's book "The Practicing Mind". In his book, Sterner, a musician and piano tuner amongst other things, points out the power of process-oriented work and its de-emphasis in the western mindset and culture. The Western mindset is goal-oriented; it is one of getting results and measuring success by results to the point that how the result is achieved becomes irrelevant (eg "cheating" an exam or faking a result). Thinking in terms of outcomes or results isn't intrinsically bad. I think it can be powerful way to think. But there is a darker side perhaps symptomatic of a culture that only knows how to think this way. It is a culture that assesses people's worth and capabilities purely by some abstract metric (a mark or grade), that is materialistic ... "If I get this [thing], *then* I'll have made it / I'll be happy" etc...
By contrast, process-oriented thinking is about focusing on what you are doing, the quality of what you are doing, how you are doing it, what you focus on as you do it. Process-oriented behaviour focuses on the process of achieving a goal rather than focusing on having it. You don't achieve something, you do it, and in a neurological sense, you are what you do, because you're building connections in your brain as you do something hopefully making you better at doing it, if you do it enough and focus on the right things.
As a quick aside Timothy Gallwey's analogy of the "10 cent computer" which is your conscious mind and the "billion dollar computer" which is the rest of your brain, is apt here. It is your billion dollar computer (the not-so-conscious part of you) that performs the juggling you spent a week learning how to do, or hit a golf ball effortlessly (if you ever got that far), or a tennis ball, or writes code cleanly in a programming language or framework that you've mastered. When you're engaging in recurring tasks, in a process-oriented way, your 10 cent computer is directing ("allowing" might be a better word) your billion dollar computer in what to focus on, steadily and regularly, allowing it to learn subtleties and complexities that you could never perform consciously without such an investment. And every day you wake up to do it again, with your brain having formed new connections overnight from the previous day, ready to make new insights.
By contrast, process-oriented thinking is about focusing on what you are doing, the quality of what you are doing, how you are doing it, what you focus on as you do it. Process-oriented behaviour focuses on the process of achieving a goal rather than focusing on having it. You don't achieve something, you do it, and in a neurological sense, you are what you do, because you're building connections in your brain as you do something hopefully making you better at doing it, if you do it enough and focus on the right things.
As a quick aside Timothy Gallwey's analogy of the "10 cent computer" which is your conscious mind and the "billion dollar computer" which is the rest of your brain, is apt here. It is your billion dollar computer (the not-so-conscious part of you) that performs the juggling you spent a week learning how to do, or hit a golf ball effortlessly (if you ever got that far), or a tennis ball, or writes code cleanly in a programming language or framework that you've mastered. When you're engaging in recurring tasks, in a process-oriented way, your 10 cent computer is directing ("allowing" might be a better word) your billion dollar computer in what to focus on, steadily and regularly, allowing it to learn subtleties and complexities that you could never perform consciously without such an investment. And every day you wake up to do it again, with your brain having formed new connections overnight from the previous day, ready to make new insights.
So picking something to work on everyday or with similar level of regularity is quite a significant thing.
For me, I can support maybe 2 "everyday"-type things. There's a limit here, just like there's a limit on the number of discrete, goal-oriented / task-oriented things you should be tackling (your WIP); you can only make yourself do so many different things every day, and you might just want to start with one and see how many more you can add from there. Mine are currently a musical skill I'm trying to work on, and the other is a set of technical skills I'm trying to build. These things are so important to me, that I make a point of doing them everyday, even if it's just 10 to 20 minutes that I can spare.
There are other recurring, process-oriented things you can fit into your week that don't have that "everyday" type of intensity. For instance there are things you might do 2 or 3 times a week, such as exercise. These things might require scheduling, so I have cards for these that I put on to my weekly board. They may be things you want to tally (do "n" times a week) or simply make a habit of doing on a particular day etc... The weekly board really helps me to plan these out and shuffle them around as circumstances change.
Process-oriented elements in my personal kanban give me something else: balance.
In the past (before personal kanban and visualising my situation), if I wanted to work on a skill, I'd spend long periods on it, usually late into the evening. Then maybe a day or two later, I'd totally neglect it or be distracted by some other task, eventually I'd lose track of it or revisit it after a long hiatus. This irregular and lumpy workflow doesn't happen so much now. I know I can't spend indefinite periods of time on a favoured activity du jour anymore. If I did, other things both mundane and important would suffer. On the flip-side, when time is short, I will try to work on an everyday type activity even if I can only spare 10 or 20 minutes of my time for that day. At least I've kept it "warm".
Process-oriented elements in my personal kanban give me something else: balance.
In the past (before personal kanban and visualising my situation), if I wanted to work on a skill, I'd spend long periods on it, usually late into the evening. Then maybe a day or two later, I'd totally neglect it or be distracted by some other task, eventually I'd lose track of it or revisit it after a long hiatus. This irregular and lumpy workflow doesn't happen so much now. I know I can't spend indefinite periods of time on a favoured activity du jour anymore. If I did, other things both mundane and important would suffer. On the flip-side, when time is short, I will try to work on an everyday type activity even if I can only spare 10 or 20 minutes of my time for that day. At least I've kept it "warm".
My personal kanban (if I can call it that) is a marriage of the "smooth": continuous, process-oriented elements and the granular: discrete, task-like goal-oriented elements. I don't see these 2 ways of thinking as antithetical or incompatible; as I engage in a process-oriented way, specific goals and tasks may emerge that I can put into my backlog.
These roughly are the main elements in my pkb now:
These roughly are the main elements in my pkb now:
- a weekly board with days of the week with cards that represent both process-oriented and goal-oriented items of work; I've dispensed with the "blue" cards that I push on
- an everyday / tally column for recording recurring things
- a backlog of goal-oriented items, short range and long range; the short range stuff is a bit like a sprint, a small number of things I want to try to achieve that week; I actually have some more specific backlogs for different things that feed into this
- skill area columns; I have about 4 of these that represent areas I want to focus on in a process-oriented way; these are the home of my process-oriented efforts.
