Why Do Plans Keep Failing?
Every New Year, we buy a diary and make plans with a fresh mindset. “I’ll definitely study English this year,” or “I’ll start working out,” we say with burning enthusiasm. But many of us have experienced these resolutions fizzling out after just a few days.
It’s a common experience. Even when claiming that living without a plan was the best way, one might eventually find oneself overwhelmed by a tidal wave of tasks. Installing a To-Do app and filling it with tasks often leads to a similar result.
The list grows longer, and tasks left undone yesterday pile up onto today. The moment opening the app becomes stressful, running back to a life without plans seems like the only escape.
The Trap of the List
The ‘To-Do List’ we commonly use has one flaw. It doesn’t show the ‘Status’.
A simple list only shows two states: ‘Things to do’ and ‘Things done’. But our daily lives aren’t that simple. Some tasks require waiting for someone else’s reply, some take days to complete, and some are just ideas for someday that aren’t urgent right now.
When all of these are mixed into one long list, the brain gets overloaded. It becomes hard to decide what to do first, and vague anxiety about unseen tasks grows. For more on how a list and a Kanban board differ, see To-Do List vs. Kanban.
Why Not Draw a Map?
When you’re lost, the first thing you need is a map. Wouldn’t managing work be similar? It’s about taking the tangled tasks out of your head and creating a visible map. This is the idea behind the Kanban Board.
Kanban started to manage the flow of goods in factories, but it can be a great tool for shaping your personal life as well. Instead of a complex list, why not divide the status of work into Columns and stick tasks as Cards?
You divide the status of work into columns — Planning, In Progress, Finished — and collect whatever comes to mind in the Inbox first. To learn more about the basic structure of Kanban and its detailed columns (stages), see What Is Kanban?; to build one yourself in toodoori, see Getting Started.
Making the big flow visible like this lets you see at a glance what is being done now, what needs to be done next, and what has been accomplished so far. Vague anxiety decreases, and a sense of control is slowly regained.
Starting is Half the Battle
You don’t need to struggle to build a perfect system from the start. Just taking the tasks circling in your head and spreading them out in front of your eyes is enough.
Why not draw your own map right now? A planned life might not start with a grand goal, but with a small habit of visually checking your daily life.