Personal Kanban at Home

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When I first heard about Kanban, it really got my attention. Later, when I was reading on this topic I came across the term “Personal Kanban”. I was inspired by how people use it to organize their day-to-day life. So, I decided to have my own Personal Kanban board for my studies.

Timetable schedule, mind maps, text books
I used to study with a timetable before I started my Kanban study board. At that time I had no idea about how many topics I have completed and how many more topics remaining. Hence, I always had lots of stress and sometimes, rather than concentrating on the notes, I used to think about the work load.

Kanban door with To Do, WIP, and Done
I started my Kanban board with the basic terms of Personal Kanban by dividing my board (it’s my door since I didn’t have a white board) into three separate parts namely: To-Do, Work in progress, and Done. I took my timetable, sticky notes, and all the study materials and started to give a weight for each topic with a priority based on the subjects I had to complete. I used large sticky notes with three different colors for different subjects. For each topic on a subject, I used small sticky notes with different colors according to “Easy”, “Should read more”, and “difficult”.
Kanban door at the end of first week
When I was using Kanban study board, the first thought came in to my mind was, “now I can see all my work anytime and I can keep a track of my progress”. It helped me to be aware of;
  • what I have done?
  • how long it took me to complete a particular topic?
  • how many more topics I have to cover?
  • how long it will take to cover a particular subject?
  • what are the difficulties I had and might have?
This helped me to reduce my stress and increase productive time effectively more than the previous approach I have been practicing. Also, practicing Personal Kanban was very entertaining. Once I finished a task and moved to “Done” column, I felt relieved. At the same time, it was exciting to start a topic and finish it before the estimated time. This really helped me to cover the whole syllabus with a huge motivation under minimum stress.