This will describe the book
iKan Personal Kanban for iPhone
iKan is the first Personal Kanban iPhone application. Take your Personal Kanban on the road!
Personal Kanban Interviews on the Business 901 Podcast
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Last month, I had the good fortune to be on Joe Dager's Business 901 Podcast. The topic, of course, was Personal Kanban.Joe edited the conversation into two parts which can be found below:Part 1
Part 2
Announcing the Launch of iKan, the Personal Kanban iPhone App
You asked for it, and we listened. Today we are proud to announce the launch of the first Personal Kanban iPhone app, iKan.When we set out to build it, we decided to focus on a few key things:1. Small Screen Many Tasks - We wanted to make the best use of the screen real estate on the iPhone, so we built the app vertically.2. KISS - We wanted the initial release to be extremely basic. In future updates we will respond to YOUR needs, and additional features will be based on YOUR input. So please keep us posted as to the direction you'd like to see iKan take. We already have a long list of upgrades in our pipeline, but are primarily interested in how you are actually using the app.3. Use Your Data - In the first version, we have had importation from Zen. (Zen, unfortunately, never let you write data back from the API. In one of their updates, the import also ceased to function.).4. Start with Basics then Build to Suit - Each iKan starts with an entry-level Personal Kanban value stream with Ready / Doing / Done sections. You can however, create your own column headings and set your own WIP limits.In the coming weeks, we'll have a series of short tutorial videos for iKan - so stay tuned!Special thanks to Jeremy Lightsmith, Gary Bernhardt and Corey Ladas who were all vital in making iKan a reality.Get your copy of iKan at the iTunes Store.NOTE: If you want to help create an Android app, talk to us!
Work / Life Balance
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 - we feel alone and seek meaning in our lives. Amusingly, we feel like we've invented this feeling.When people tell me that their generation is somehow unique in this feeling, I ask them to talk to their parents and their grandparents. Soon they discover it is merely a myth that takes just a few minutes to dispel. When your parents laugh at your hubris for an hour or so, it's quite a gut-check.Nonetheless, we can posit that we've managed to give ourselves a lot more controllable distractions than were there before. We just don't control them very well.So for this third post on Task Types, we'll do some work/life balance tasks and, like we did with work tasks, we'll establish some rules around them. Again, let's use colors.Let's say that purple represents family time. Use purple stickies and note real family time - not that trip to Costco but rather, those things that your kids will look back on and remember with a smile.Next, let's have blue represent those things that need to be done for the family. These are tasks like, "Fix the leak in the downstairs bathroom" or "Mow the Lawn."Finally, let's use green for aspirations. These are tasks like "Read the complete works of Vonnegut" or "Learn Personal Kanban" or "Get CPR Certificate."Sound good? Great! So what happens next?These colored tasks can appear on your Personal Kanban as task types. You can then set up your balance - literally. Every day you can pull one purple. Every week you can pull two blue and two green. And in your DONE column, you can see where you are with your goals.Work/life balance now has a shape and a color palette.Having said this, I consider my work and my life as indiscrete parts of a continuum. I love what I'm doing at Modus and the people I'm doing it with. So for me, the balance comes from not becoming so enamored with Modus work that I forsake all other activities. And, yes, I do need to work on this.But, I will venture a guess that if you actively dislike what you do professionally, work/life balance will be unapproachable. You simply cannot dislike that much of your life and expect to achieve a healthy balance.Photo by Robotography