Creating Flow and Focus

When you first make a Kanban board, you might feel motivated and pile all sorts of tasks onto the ‘In Progress’ list. Reading a book, working out, writing a report, grocery shopping… It feels like becoming Superman. But even after a few days, these cards often don’t move to ‘Finished’ and stay right there.

We call this a Bottleneck. And this can be the main thing that blocks the flow of work.

The Illusion of Multitasking

Our brains are reportedly not designed to process multiple things at once. We believe we are doing several things simultaneously, but in reality, we are just Switching from one task to another at a very high speed.

This switching process comes with a cost. Energy is consumed to remember the context of the previous task and recall the context of the new one. The more tasks there are ‘In Progress’, the more this switching cost increases, and the energy available for actual work decreases. In the end, it becomes a day where you moved busily but finished nothing.

Limiting WIP (Work In Progress)

So, Personal Kanban suggests limiting the number of tasks in progress (WIP).

Think of a highway. If there are too many cars, you can’t speed up. The flow becomes smooth only when there is appropriate spacing. Isn’t the flow of work similar?

Try making a promise not to exceed 2, or at most 3, tasks ‘In Progress’. To start a new task, finish one of the current tasks or send it back to the waiting queue first.

“Stop starting, start finishing.”

This simple principle can bring quite positive changes.

1. Improved Focus: Full concentration on one thing becomes possible.
2. Cleaner Closure: Tasks don’t drag on and get wrapped up in time.
3. A Sense of Accumulation: Watching ‘Finished’ cards pile up one by one, you gain the momentum for your next single step.

Rules for Creating Flow

Besides limiting WIP, you can also create your own rules (Policies) to help with work flow.

• Using Stages: Within the large framework of ‘In Progress’, try creating detailed stages like ‘Doing’, ‘Reviewing’, and ‘Revising’. It becomes clearer where work is stuck.
• Breaking Down Size: Break down large tasks that take several days into smaller cards. A size that can be finished within a day is less burdensome.
• Setting Priorities: Place the most important tasks to be done first at the top of the ‘Planning’ list. Simply pick them up from the top without hesitation.

Rules are not meant to be binding. Rather, they act like safety devices that reduce time spent worrying in complex situations and help focus more on the work. Repetitive sorting — like applying a label based on a due date — can be handed off to automation rules.

In toodoori, you can set a WIP limit on stages in the ‘In Progress’ group, in Soft or Hard mode. For how to set it up, see the flow feature.