Welcome to Day 3 of the Kanban Mini-Challenge! 

Today, you’ll discover: 

→ The #1 key to success with using Personal Kanban

→ Retrospectives: How to focus and move forward — every week!

→ How to troubleshoot your task-management + travelling with Personal Kanban 

→ Battling what-ifs, setting boundaries, and what’s next with your self-management overhaul!

Reading time: 12-mins
Doing time: 5-mins
Action item: Set a reminder for a weekly retrospective
+ SHARE A PIC OF YOUR BOARD!


The Key to Succes with Personal Kanban

The #1 key to success with Personal Kanban is to perform regular retrospectives 

Retrospectives may become one of your favorite features of Personal Kanban. 

Because they allow you to pause and consider the following:

  • what went well, 
  • what didn’t go as expected, and 
  • what could be improved going forward?

They’re regular and ritualized moments of reflection.

The experience you gain from evaluating each week’s successes and failures gives you insight into what you want to replicate and what you want to avoid moving forward. It’s how you build new systems (and pathways in your brain) and refine or discard old and outdated ones. 

Magnificent!

In other words, regular retrospectives identify (and help you act on) opportunities for positive change and vanquishing your procrastination problems. 

So let’s learn a little bit more about what makes them great. 

Restoring focus and moving forward—every week!

Ever started your work week feeling scattered and unsure of what to work on first? 

A weekly review can solve that. 

It’s the check-in that every self-employed person needs, but often skips. 

At the beginning of each week: 

  • Examine completed tasks from the prior week
  • Acknowledge what went well and what could be improved 
  • Celebrate victories, jobs well done, and tasks you truly enjoyed
  • Learn from what you didn’t get done, where you hit roadblocks, and what drained you the most 
  • Assign what’s ready and important for the next week. 

Do this every week and you’ll quickly discover the astounding effect it has on your ability to show up, stay on track, and ship your best work—consistently. 

I hold my retrospectives on Tuesday, which is the start of the work week for me. It’s the first thing I do, and takes less than 10 minutes to refresh my board. Once refreshed I feel immediately more confident and capable of accomplishing the tasks I’ve set for the next 5-7 days. 

It’s good to note that you don’t have to wait until the end of the week to hold a retrospective, especially in those situations where a task or project gets derailed and you’re left frustrated or unclear on how to move forward. 

If you need to, hold and “emergency retrospective” to make space to examine the problem and use it as a learning opportunity. I find emergency retrospectives very calming. They also allow you to involve others who might team up on the problem and help you devise a solution.

Here’s a timelapse video of one of my weekly retrospectives: 

Retrospectives: A few reflective prompts to evaluate your week

Retrospectives don’t need to be complicated. But they must be deliberate and routine. 

You can hold them at whatever intervals you’re comfortable with and for whatever duration. 

But remember that the more frequently you hold your retrospective, the fresher things are in your mind. And when you keep them on a consistent schedule, they allow for minor (low-cost but high-return) course corrections.

If you’d like some prompts to consider each week, here are several questions you can reflect on:

  • What went well?
  • What did I put off or avoid?
  • What did I let interrupt my flow?
  • How many high-value tickets did I get done?
  • What tasks energized me, and what drained me?
  • What ticket or task could I have broken down more?
  • What bigger-picture goal was each task contributing to?
  • What am I focusing on next? 

For an impromptu or emergency retrospective, these might help you uncover a solution: 

  • What’s not working?
  • What’s most important right now? 
  • What am I most concerned about?
  • What would it look like if it were easy?
  • What do I need more information on or help with? 
  • What’s the first step? Think: What could you do in 1-hour to kick off? 

Mini-Action Item: Schedule an appointment with yourself every week for your retrospective. 

  1. Pick a day
  2. Set the reminder
  3. Show up 

Schedule the reminder right now. Make it recurring.

I use the start of my work week.

Troubleshooting Your Task Management 

Introducing a new system (that sticks!) is a radical way to jumpstart your self-management skills and start executing your best ideas. But, unfortunately, there are plenty of hang-ups we all have around getting things done. In particular, working through fear and self-doubt when doing hard things.

So with that in mind, I’ll share some useful tips for helping you with your new board and productivity system, but also—tackling things like procrastination, perfectionism, and decision fatigue. 

After all, having the system is one thing, but your mindset—and how well you manage your energy—is a whole other ball game. And it’s the key to unlocking a more joyful, productive and fulfilling life.

So let’s dig in. 

On Resistance and Procrastination-Proofing Your Work!

The reason we find it so hard to start some tasks is that we haven’t made them procrastination proof.

The excitement of starting something new (new project, new idea, new exercise routine) is a sneaky catalyst for procrastination. We get so excited that we want to do so much more, “Screw a 10-minute walk; I want to run 5k!” 

Excitement-driven ideas often equal high resistance.

Procrastination proofing makes a task so easy you can’t refuse to start.

So, just like habits, where if you want them to stick, you have to start so incredibly small that you can’t fail—the smaller you can make your tasks, the easier it is to follow through.

Atomic Tasks and Extra Tips for Writing Better Tickets

With your new Personal Kanban system: 

  • 1 ticket = 1 task
  • That task is represented on a Post-it; and
  • You move each ticket around your Kanban board as you need to. 

But unfortunately, many people suck at writing down their tasks (I’m not saying you do! But you might…)

And while Kanban can be an excellent system for you, you can still shoot yourself in the foot with bad ticket writing. 

For instance, if you look at the difference between the tickets below, you’ll notice a significant difference: 

Bad: New blog post 
Good: Draft headline and outline of new blog post 

Bad: Client project 
Good:
Create a new client project brief

Being too broad with how you signal your brain to begin a new job, is an almost instant trigger for procrastination.

But as you can see from the examples above—specificity can work wonders!

The tasks are the same (essentially), but the “good” tickets:

  • Indicate a concrete first step to take.
  • You can see what “done” looks like.
  • You know exactly what it takes for this task to be finished. 

Remember: Everything has a first step. 

To improve your execution and use your Kanban board as well as you intend to, drilling down to the first step (or next step) and focusing only on that is the single greatest adjustment you can make to how you approach your task management. 

If you do that one thing, you’ll see some magnificent improvements. But there is an art to writing a good ticket. So, I want to share some tips so you can get better at that super-quickly. 

Tip #1 – Atomic Tasks FTW!

If you struggle with procrastination, overthinking, or feeling uncomfortable because you’re learning new skills and trying hard things—atomic tasks are your new best friend. 

Think of an atomic task as unable to be split or made any smaller. 

When you write your task out, it should fit on a Post-it.

And as you can see from the earlier examples, being descriptive, specific, and using an action word at the beginning creates a clear image of the exact result you want to achieve.  

“New Blog Post” is vague andunlikely to take less than a day (certainly not if you want to produce great work!), whereas “Draft headline and outline of a new blog post” tells you exactly what to do and what “done” looks like.

You can also confidently complete it within the next couple of hours.

Tip #2: Attach a time frame

One thing I have found to be incredibly helpful is to add in a time restriction.

If you’re a fan of the Pomodoro Technique, then you know how powerful it can be to set a timer for a task and put yourself on the clock. 

Well, it works great for writing your tickets too. Add a time appetite to your tickets so you know exactly how long you intend to spend on it. I tend to use either 50min or 20min if I’m going to add a time limit. Mostly because if you’re applying the atomic task approach, most tickets you write can fit in these timeframes.

Of course, there are exceptions. I can write and edit for more than 2 hours if I’m feeling it.

However, because I used to find it so hard to START writing, attaching the 50-minute timer to my drafts made it feel more doable.

And I eventually trained myself to think, “50 minutes is all I need”. (This came in super handy after having my first kid and working during naps!) 

Tip #3: Use descriptive action words on your tickets

Whether you’re planning projects or adding tickets to your board, it pays to get better at how you write out specific jobs.

Here is a collection of verbs that work really well in the context of task management. 

Quarter or cycle-sized project verbs
For work that needs a few weeks or a full project cycle to complete:

  • Rework ​
  • Develop ​
  • Strategize 
  • ​Launch/Ship ​
  • Build ​
  • Publish 
  • Kick off ​
  • Move/Relocate ​

Week-sized project verbs
For work that needs at least one block ~50min, but probably not more than five for each coherent segment of work: ​

  • Research 
  • ​Decide on ​
  • Collaborate with 
  • ​Create 
  • Draft 
  • Edit​
  • Plan ​
  • Design ​
  • Analyze/evaluate ​
  • Coordinate ​
  • Promote ​
  • Finalise ​
  • Apply

Task verbs
For work that can be done in ~20 minutes:

  • Email ​
  • Call ​
  • Sort ​
  • Read 
  • ​Send ​
  • Check ​
  • Review ​
  • Find ​
  • Compile 
  • ​Schedule ​
  • Make ​
  • Text ​
  • Fax ​
  • Mail ​
  • Print

Getting better at naming your tasks and tickets is the low-hanging fruit that so many people ignore. The signals you send to your brain to take action are vital for executing more. 

On the Go? How to Travel with Personal Kanban 

If you’re lucky enough to work from anywhere or travel a lot in your career — there will likely be times when you want to take your board with you. 

Here are a few things that work well: 

  • Take a picture of your board before you leave the house. You won’t get to move your tickets around physically, but you can quickly see what you need to work on. And can refresh your board when you get home. 
  • Use a manilla folder as a mini-board to house your Ready/Today/WIP/Done tickets. Open the manilla folder, draw out all regular columns (excluding Options) and then pop your tickets in, and fold it back into a manageable size. That way, you can have the physical board with you and can focus only on the priorities (what’s in your Ready column) you’ve already established. Leave your Options behind they’re not on your radar yet for a reason. 
  • Create a smaller, more portable board. You can make a smaller board if you simply like to move around while working from home or don’t have space for a large whiteboard. When I was still breastfeeding my baby and working simultaneously, I had a mini clipboard version of Personal Kanban so I could work from the bed. Using that rather than a large whiteboard was helpful in the newborn period! 

Battling the “What ifs?” with boundaries and positive constraint 

What happens if you fully commit yourself to work for the day and then something happens, something you can’t avoid?

This is where allowing yourself some slack in your schedule is critical. Because “booked solid” is great…until it’s not. 

The idea my business coach sold me on is to think about a dam: 

It can hold 100% water capacity with no problems. But as soon as it gets to 110%, it’s a disaster because all that overflow can wipe out the village and animals who live downstream from the dam. 

The same thing happens with people: 

We fill our schedule to the brim, and then one thing happens (maybe you get sick, or your kid does!), and the dam bursts. It just takes one thing when you are running at 100% for that unexpected overflow to wreak havoc.

But if you limit the amount of work you commit to—you can give yourself a better chance of driving excellent results.

Avoid filling your day or week to 100%. Instead, give yourself space to pull more tasks onto your plate, but only if you can. And if something crops up that you can’t avoid, it’s cool because you can handle it. You’ve allowed space. 

This is the power of positive constraint. 

You achieve more by applying restrictions to your Kanban board (and the expectations you set for yourself). 

Some positive constraints to apply:  

  • Add timers to your tasks so it’s easier to get started, and follow through
  • Limit the number of tickets you expect to finish each week (add no more than 6 to your Ready column!) 
  • Intentionally avoid tickets and tasks you KNOW you’re not ready for (even if they’re excellent ideas you can’t wait to get started on)
  • Move only one ticket at a time to the Today spot on your board. (Yes, you will do more than that one thing! But focus on the first thing first.)

These small boundaries can help stave off procrastination, limit your work in progress, and avoid having your tasks expand to fill the time you have.

You have to give yourself enough slack so that if the dam fills, it will not overflow and flood your village.

Action Item: Send me a pic of your Personal Kanban board

Share your board with me, even if it’s a work in progress! 

Nothing brings me greater joy than seeing clients, students, and friends get their own boards going.

It’s like being part of an exclusive club! 

I want this to work for you. So please, use me to hold you accountable, and send me that board pic!

What’s next? 

Once your Personal Kanban board is up and running, it’s a matter of putting in the reps so that it becomes second nature to use it daily. 

But of course, there is more to self-management and executing your best ideas than implementing a shiny new system. 

  • Feeling more productive, 
  • Making good decisions, and 
  • Achieving what you say you want…

—it’s hard work. 

So if you’re self-employed (or on the way to it!) and need to become an exceptional manager of one, stay tuned. 

In the next week, I’ll send you some excellent (and highly-practical) ideas for: 

  • taking on new challenges, 
  • pushing past procrastination (especially when learning new skills), and 
  • making more meaningful progress toward your biggest and boldest goals.  

I’d love to hear how you went in the challenge. 

Send me a reply to today’s email, and show me your board!