How Using a Kanban Board Could Make Us Happier
Kanban Board is a tool we can use to control our life. Our life? Yes, you read that correctly: our life. At its simplest form, Kanban Board is a tool to manage tasks. It’s a to do list. However, we should look at it from a broader point of view. Managing our tasks also means managing the time and effort that we use to do things in our life. It’s about having sufficient control of our life. With sufficient control, we will be less overloaded with tasks and more able to focus on the important things in our life. That is why using a Kanban Board could make us happier.
Kanban Board
Before I go any further, I’ll begin with a little introduction to the Kanban Board. The concept of a Kanban Board is really simple. Most people that I know of that uses Kanban Board usually start with 3 list: To Do, Doing, and Done. Others might use different number of lists or even different names for the list, but at its core, it remains as simple as to do, doing, and done. Each of those list represent the status of the tasks inside it. With that, a glimpse of the board should give us a complete view of what’s currently going on.
As with the concept, using a Kanban Board is equally simple. Everything we must do, should do, would love to do, quite-reluctant-but-should-do-it-anyway must first go in To Do. When we start doing something, we move the related task to Doing. Lastly, when the task was completed, whether we fail or succeed, we move it to Done.
Simple, right? It sure is. However, does using the Kanban Board as simple as that made me happier? Not really. If we really want our life to be happier, working with a simple combination of To Do, Doing, and Done doesn’t really cut it. To use Kanban Board to help control our life and be happier, there’s more to it than just putting our tasks in and moving them between the lists.
“Be Happy” Kanban Board
There are a few things we must do to make our Kanban Board better. First, we must prioritize. This is really important. I can’t emphasize how important this is. We must prioritize the things in our To Do so that we can easily see which tasks that we need to do first. Our To Do should not only be a list. It should be a prioritized list. With prioritization, no matter how many items exist in out To Do, we would still know which ones we need to do as soon as possible.
We also need to make it a habit to prioritize early, i.e. when we add something new in our To Do. Whenever we add a new task into To Do, we must also decide where in the list should we put it. If we have to drop everything for this new item, we put it at the top of To Do. If this new item can be postponed or it is something that would be nice to get done, we might put it somewhere at the middle or perhaps go all the way at the bottom of To Do.
By prioritizing, we minimize the risk of being overwhelmed because, as I mentioned before, no matter how many items exist in To Do, we don’t have to think about all of them at the same time. There are time and place for everything and prioritization will help decide that time and place. The things we should really worry about are the ones on top of To Do, not every single one in To Do.
After prioritization, comes focus. This is as important as prioritize. When the time comes to start working, we tackle the first thing on top of To Do. Move that task to doing and focus on doing that ONE thing. That means we need to limit the stuff in our Doing list so that we can put all of our time and energy into completing them. The best way to do it is simply to limit our Doing list to only 1 task. Imagine all the concentrated effort to finish that 1 task. The result should be amazing.
This combination between prioritizing our tasks and focusing (limiting) what we’re doing is what really made me happier. Not only was I able to avoid being constantly overloaded with tasks, I was also able to give my best at everything I do. That, in a way, gives me more satisfaction because everything in my Done list were the result of doing a good job even when the result was failure.
Updating and Waiting
While prioritizing and focusing do a good job in getting better control of my life, we still need more to handle real life situation. Real life requires us to multi-task: working on more than one task at same (duration of) time. There are a few other things that we need to make it through the harsh condition of multi-tasking. Two of what I deem important are updating and waiting.
First, we need to consistently update the state of the task in our already-limited Doing list. Whenever we reach a milestone or have accomplished something worth noting, update the task. I’m not talking about updating with everything that we’re doing. I’m only talking about events or notes that is worth mentioning during our work. Update the task with these things so whenever we’re interrupted or decided to take a little break, we can easily get back to continue where we left off.
Second, make a Waiting list. When we are interrupted and must switch from what we’re currently doing to another task, we put the old task into Waiting and move the new one to Doing. With that, we can easily see that while we are working on the new task, we still have other tasks waiting to be finished. Having a Waiting list is better that putting them back to To Do because with that Waiting list, we can see that we’ve made progress in some of our tasks. Just remember to “ignore” the Waiting list and keep focusing on the Doing list.
Conclusion
To conclude, all the above is really about supercharging our regular To Do, Doing, and Done. By prioritizing, focusing, updating, and waiting, we add more power to our typical to do list. Not only do we get better in managing our tasks, we also avoid being loaded with too many things in our head and our hands. By doing that, we are one step ahead towards being happy in our life.
To get started with the above steps, I recommend using Trello. I am not affiliated with Trello and I won’t get anything from this recommendation. Any tools would do, but Trello is my favorite. If you decide to use Trello, you can also jump start your path to happiness with the Be Happy template board that I created here: trello.com/b/o1ONEGxK/be-happy.
