Kanban Solution for Managing To Do Lists

I accomplished a few things this weekend. I finally pulled the trigger and published my website, which is just a blog at the moment. I’ve been wresting with all the themes available on WordPress. Most themes will do what I need them to do at the moment. So, rather than seek out all the wiz bang widgets and plugins to make the site shine, I published that thing, so I can move on. I’m feeling so much better after taking that imperfect action.

That one action cascaded into a number of others. Now that it’s launched, I wanted to announce it. What a perfect time to design my social media posting templates! So, I dove into Canva and started designing, only to find out that my calm, soft colors don’t translate well, so I scrapped them and chose bolder colors that match my logo.

Right now, I have a Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter account. I’ll probably need to research post schedulers. There’s a ton to choose from. If anyone has recommendations, please comment below which ones you like and why.

The other helpful thing I did was start a kanban using a white board and sticky notes to track all the to do’s and random research tasks that keep popping up. Have you heard of kanban? It’s a Japanese lean manufacturing concept, which basically uses a visual tool to track material through the production process. In an office setting, it translates to managing the status of your to do lists. In it’s simplest form, you can create three columns: To Do, Doing, and Done. Done is less important for me. Once it’s done, it’s off my radar and I’m moving on. But there could be a reason you would want to keep track of what’s completed. Maybe you celebrate or reward yourself after you reach a certain number of tasks completed. Or maybe it’s a recurring task and you want to improve your time in completing it. If so, you would want to track the time the task is in work.

To reiterate, create an office kanban by using three columns: To Do, Doing, and Done. Load it up with your to dos and move them from left to right as they are completed. You might also have multiple rows for each major project or use different colored sticky notes to signify projects or change in status. Take the generic concept and see how to make it work for you.

Do you already have a method for tackling a monumental to do list? Please share what works for you in the comments below!