Personal Kanban Board

Borrowed from Toyota's manufacturing system and adapted for individual use by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry. Personal Kanban has two rules: visualize your work, and limit your work in progress (WIP). A board with columns — Backlog, Doing (limit 3), Done — makes the invisible visible. You can see at a glance that you have 47 things in your backlog and three things you're actually working on. The WIP limit is the critical innovation: by capping active tasks, you force yourself to finish before starting, eliminating the productivity-killing context-switching that happens when you have twelve things "in progress." Physical boards (sticky notes on a wall) work better than apps for most people because the tactile ritual of moving a card to Done is genuinely satisfying.