In this video I share a personal productivity tip I learned from Paul Klipp during the Open Agile Romania conference: using a combination of mindmapping and personal Kanban.
For the past few days my productivity has gone through the roof, I feel less stressed about the work I need to do (and there is quite a bit between conference, multiple businesses, products, family, etc.), and I’m getting a lot more done.
Let me know in the comments what tips you have for increasing your productivity.
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Hi Robert,
Very informative video. The reasons you enumerated are pretty much what attracted me to Paul's tool. It's great and the visual representation of tasks as stacks, grouped in weeks, days, etc helps a lot, especially visual persons like myself.
An issue that I didn't find solution for in kanbanery.com was that of recurrent tasks. Let's say I want to read my RSS feeds every day, or every Friday. It's a little cumbersome to add that todo item over and over again.
I'm not so sure how recurrent tasks fit into kanban though, as I don't yet have that much knowledge of this technique.
I'm glad you like the video. As for recurrent tasks, I am not read enough on Kanban to know where those fit in. I imagine you can create multiple cards and keep feeding them into the system. This might be easier with the use of a physical board.
Regardless, tasks such as “reading the rss feeds” are something I am leaving out of my personal Kanban. For instance, I started reading “The Black Swan” and thanks to the productivity gains of the past few days, I have been able to read the book without the conscious passing of time. I'm actually paying attention more.
Keeping items like that out keeps me focused on the bigger tasks at hand.
Ionut, you might want to consider Things (http://culturedcode.com/things/), which has worked great for me.
It has projects, tasks, a “done” log, recurring activities, deadlines, and a Someday/Maybe > Next > Today flow.
Differences: not web based, no WIP limit, no reports.
I've been using Things + a variation of the Pomodoro technique (http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/) to get things done, and I also get that feeling of progress that Robert mentions. One day I'll definitely check out kanbanery.
Awesome post and video, Robert!
I'm sure with time the system will increase in productivity and sharped the rough edges.
Very cool. I'm glad you found my open space so inspiring. I wrote an article on the topic at your request and posted it here: http://paulklipp.com/images/PersonalProductivit...
I have some recurring tasks in my personal kanban board. I managed them just like I would on a physical board. At the end (or start) of the day, I move all recurring tasks back to “today” and archive the rest.
Thanks for your suggestion. I'll give it a try these days to see how it works. It's good to know that it worked out well for you using Pomodoro, because I was trying to do the same thing with kanbanery.
tip: I see you have all the features of kanbanery.com turned on. I find some of them, like the user avatar, to be less useful for personal kanban. You can clean up your workspace by turning off the features you don't use in the project setting.
Another thing that I do is batch daily tasks. I use one pomidoro to drink a glass of water, do 50 pushups and crunches, take my vitamins, write an entry in my daily journal, skim my RSS feeds (using instapaper to store the ones I plan to read carefully), and plan my day. It's one task card which I recycle back to the “Today” column at the end of every day so it's waiting for me there in the morning. Doing all these things in one pomidoro gets them out of the way early and putting them all on one task card reduces clutter on my task board.
If you're doing Pomidoro by the book, then you're also gather metrics. You might find the task histories, lead and cycle time reports and cumulative flow diagram features of kanbanery.com userful.
I'm very interested in the combination of a mindmap and kanbanery. You say “I take items from my mind map here, and create tasks in my backlog”… but how did you do that?
I've been using NovaMind and I'm trying to imagine did you have to copy and paste each one or does it somehow facilitate dragging them in? How does that actually work?
Is there a place to get further information on using a mindmap with kanbanery?
Thanks
Hi Hank,
I literally copied and pasted the text from my mindmap into stories on Kanbanery. These are two separate tools so the copy/paste is necessary. I then added any additional information to the story (in Kanbanery) as needed.
Excellent video and well presented topic. I've been using MindMaps for a while and love the concept of moving nodes from them to a Kanbanary column. Thanks!
Glenn Rogers, Developer of DBGallery: The Photo DATAbase System
I like mindmapping and I have one major project entirely documented in a Novamind mindmap, and I like the look of a Kanban (that's entirely new to me)… given that you're copying and pasting then there is not an easy information sharing synergy between the two – so I'm interested in understanding further how the two compliment each other for you and if the relationship between the two actually turned out to be a maintainable one, i.e. if you're still using both together to maintain your life's todos.
Any description or reference to some other material would be of interest. -thx
Wow, really informative!!
Just started using Nozbe. Had used mindmapping in the past.
Really like the separate columns. Will try using it today.
Video really helped, much better than any article would have done.
So you've ben
So you've been using this for a few weeks now. Are you still as jazzed about it? I find that almost any new personal productivity plan is helpful at the start, but you don't really find out whether it works for you until a few weeks have gone by.
Has it been long enough? Any followup thoughts?
Hi Ryan,
I am still using the method to great effect. I've found that during the week I will skip the mindmap and put tasks directly into my Kanban. I maintain the mindmap for the brainstorming and high-level idea gathering, whereas the personal kanban is like a better to-do list.
I'm definitely still jazzed.
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Did you guys see the http://demo.taskboard.cognifide.com/ and it's kanban board.
The concept is the same but the ui seems to much lighter and cleaner (at least for me).
Cheers, Marcin
I haven't seen it but will check it out. I'm using Kanbanery for other projects, so it's a familiar tool.
Very nice. A friend introduced me to mind-mapping a few years ago (@_neville) and while I am still not sold on the concept yet I am sold on the personal Kanban approach. As Agile Coach for my company I have often wondered about using it to replace my boring to-do lists and with your video I don't have to think about the “how to implement” any more. Thanks.
Jack Harvey
@jack_harvey
Good luck Jack. Let me know how it goes and how your personal kanban approach differs from mine.
appreciated this post!