Tag Archives: prioritization

The Iron Chef Paradox

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Jim Benson

You have one hour. Just sixty minutes to prepare a meal for four, five courses of the highest possible quality, and with conspicuous creativity. The key ingredient comprising the meal is kept a secret until the last possible minute. While … Continue reading →

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Complex Lives Pt 2: Visualizing Real Work

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Jim Benson

In part one of Complex Lives, we set a Future in Progress (FIP) limit for Jessica, a busy and active single mom. Her goals were overwhelming her ability to get things done. So we reigned them in by giving her … Continue reading →

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Work / Life Balance

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Jim Benson

I’ve been surprised lately by the number of people asking me about work/life balance. We feel we are undervaluing our family ties, our personal goals, our community involvement, our hobbies and our art. Oftentimes our work makes us feel isolated … Continue reading →

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When Good Tasks Go Bad

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Jim Benson

Yesterday we were introduced to Richard, who is juggling the demands of several clients trying to keep each of them happy. His largest project entails working alone on a client’s mission-critical legacy system. So in the last blog post we … Continue reading →

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What Are Your Task Types?

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Jim Benson

Flexibility is an unsung virtue. People want absolutes: “Do this, then do that, don’t deviate and then you’ll achieve success.” But we all know that absolutes are often false, and that context is king – in life, in work, and … Continue reading →

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Dependencies in Personal Kanban

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Jim Benson

Dependencies are things that occur in succession. One thing happens, then another thing can happen. Ideally, on a kanban, the value stream will visualize these transitions. For a value stream like this: Analysis -> Creation -> Refinement -> Launch refinement … Continue reading →

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The Priority Filter: A Tutorial

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Jim Benson

Prioritization is often even more difficult and daunting as the tasks that confront you. A priority filter in your Personal Kanban helps you determine what tasks are ready in your queue, and the order of importance they should assume.  Click … Continue reading →

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Am I Productive, Efficient, or Effective?

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Jim Benson

Productivity: having the power to produce Efficiency: the ratio of the output to the input of any system Effectiveness: being able to bring about a desired result Personal Kanban is considered a Productivity tool, because it gives us the power … Continue reading →

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Urgent and Important: Incorporating your existing tools into Personal Kanban

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Jim Benson

We’ve devised Personal Kanban to adapt to any system you might currently use (unless of course your preferred  system is utter chaos). The only two rules are visualize your work and limit work-in-progress (WIP). PK’s main goal is to get … Continue reading →

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WIP can be Imposed

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Jim Benson

Please don’t feel bad if you find you’ve lost control of your WIP. The two rules of Personal Kanban: 1. Visualize Your Work 2. Limit WIP With a little practice, #1 becomes easy…second nature, even. Number 2 is, well, pretty … Continue reading →

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