How to Use Personal Kanban

Reminders now has sections for lists, and once you've established sections, you can display a list in columns. I thought that maybe I could apply Personal Kanban to my Reminders. I started with a little research.

Backlog/To-DoDoingDone

My initial thought was that this wasn't going to fit gracefully with Reminders. I already have a list called Open, which keeps track of all tasks that don't have dates. And then I have a Today view, which would be Doing. And Reminders has a built in list of Completed, that I only visit to undo an accidental completion.

Your “Doing” section consists of all of the to-dos you’re working on right now, or plan to work on immediately. Ideally, they’d be further organized by priority, so you can glance at them at any time and see which ones to tackle first. Your “Backlog” are all of the to-dos you aren’t working on right now, but need to get to at some point. “Done” is somewhat obvious, but it’s important to keep on your Kanban, since seeing how much work you’ve completed keeps you motivated and productive.

This something that I considered, maybe going in and reviewing my completed things, but honestly, what keeps me motivated is knocking things off the lists and getting them down to zero.

That’s a simple Kanban. If it sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen some of the many featured workspaces and productivity posts where we’ve discussed the merits of using Post-Its or whiteboards like this to organize your to-dos. Whiteboards are perfect for Personal Kanban. It’s easy to draw columns, then add and erase to-dos quickly. If you prefer, you can draw your columns, then use Post-It notes for individual to-dos. This makes them easy to move without rewriting. Additionally, Post-It notes come in different colors, which gives you an easy way to organize your Kanban by priority. For example, yellow notes can be medium priority, purple notes low priority, and red ones most important.

Productivity 101: How to Use Personal Kanban to Visualize Your Work | Lifehacker