What is meant by using your time well or poorly is not something that anyone but you can judge. I think one mistake that leads to a lot of personal dissatisfaction is to accept what is “commonly” considered productive even if it’s not really what’s important to you.
I’ll jump right into my story. I had day off for a public holiday yesterday, decease and as I do every day that I’m home, I started it by building a personal kanban board on the living room wall. My wife thinks it’s silly; my son loves it. He knows just what to expect from me for the rest of the day. Together we put up sticky notes for everything I plan to do, and he helps me prioritize. He loves playing video games with me on the iPad (30 minutes per day), so he always makes sure it gets high up on the list.
Yesterday, though, I did something a little different. I added to the top of the “Doing” column all the things I wouldn’t do. They would be a waste of my time. Some obvious ones are things like “checking email.” There were some less obvious ones that got me thinking about what waste really is.
If you think only in terms of outcomes, anything that adds value is a good thing. But if you think in terms of opportunity costs, given time is limited, many value-adding activities pale in comparison to the value of others. In addition to listing the habitual time-wasters like checking email, I found other categories of waste.
Ibsen introduced me to the concept of life-lies — lies you tell yourself to cover pain or create a sense of purpose. I found in my past to-do lists lots of mini life-lies. Call them day-lies. For example, “write a letter to Grandma.” I should do it. I know I should, so it goes on my list. But I know better. It’s always on my list, but I never do it because it’s on the list. I do it when I’m inspired to do it, whether it’s on a list or not. So it’s one of those little lies I tell myself when I’m planning a productive day but which I rarely do. It only serves to create guilt at the end of the day.
Similarly, the bathroom could be cleaned, or it could not. It’s one of those things I do to fill time when I’m feeling aimless, as is ironing. Yesterday was about time with my son. I didn’t want to fill aimless time with chores; I didn’t want aimless time unless I choose to have it, so “clean the bathroom” and “ironing” both went on my “Don’t Do” list. I also find myself baking when I don’t know what to do with myself. No one objects, because I’m really good at it and sweets are always welcome, but I know I do it to kill time the same way some people watch TV, so it goes on the “Don’t Do” list, to force me to find other creative ways to spend my time.
My son specifically asked me not to go to work, and I wasn’t planning to, but I committed to not going to work on my “Don’t Do” list, and he liked that.
So, now I knew what I wouldn’t do. What to do? Of course, video games was there, but I needed to have a real sense of accomplishment, and how do you do that when you have nothing to do? I made up other tasks that would give me that sense of accomplishment, and it worked wonderfully. One was to “Learn Something” which I moved to done after finding out that electoral votes are redistributed after every 10-year census and that quasars are powered by the accretion disks of massive black holes. Another fun challenge I set myself was to get both my wife and son laughing at the same time. That was going to be rough, because my wife was sick, and getting a grin would be hard enough. I didn’t get that done until nearly 7PM, but it sure felt good when I did. Another was to “Break a Pattern.” I committed to doing something different than I do it every day.
These kind of tasks were so refreshing, challenging, and satisfying, that now that I’m back at work and it’s not a holiday anymore, I think at least one task on the backlog each day should always be of this variety. “Surprise Someone”, “Talk to a Stranger”, “Discover what an employee does in his free time.” The sky’s the limit.
Your backlog doesn’t have to drag you down and it doesn’t have to be full of stuff you do for your boss or your clients. It should also lift you up, remind you to have fun, and challenge you.
Book Giveaway: I’d love to hear your favorite personal kanban hack. I found an extra copy of Personal Kanban: Mapping Work|Navigating Life and I’ll send it to one of people who shares their suggestions in the comments and then Tweets a link to this post by November 12th.
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Paul – Great post! I really like the idea of adding the things you won’t do to your kanban board. Those things that suck you in and eat up half your day, which don’t add any value. I also like the concept of “mini life-lies” and how recognizing those forces us to be honest with ourselves.
Lastly, the idea of adding items that will shake things up and make the day fun. Like “make someone laugh”, “meet someone new”. I do a lot of reading articles and blogs, but I don’t really participate in the conversation, so today mine was “Comment on something valuable I learned”.
Really great post! I am happy I put reading it so high on my to-do list.. 😉
It’s good to know I’m not the only having (and hanging) on my list some tickets, which indeed are well described by life-lies. I discovered this working with some past IT projects, that when a post-it with some task comes off the board because it is so old, maybe instead of putting it the again it makes sense to ask aloud if we really need? It is a moment to decide if it is a kind of chore, which nobody wants to do, but it is important, or simply there’s no real value behind it. In personal life it’s not much different.
I also like the idea of everyday learning. I always try to reshuffle some professional development tasks with something more personal, more enjoyable, simply fun. For me it is rarely a typical entertainment, but something like finding time to read about inspiring science research. Something totally out of my everyday life!
Hi Paul,
Thanks for this post! Just this past weekend I posted on my own blog about Personal Kanban pathologies (from stale items on the backlog to tasks that hang around 99% complete in Doing). Your point about life-lies could certainly have made it onto that list!
As a working mom with two boys, I started using Personal Kanban a few years ago to try and stay organized. Too many things were falling through the cracks. It has helped us tremendously, and I wouldn’t trade my board for anything.
However, as if working mother guilt is not enough already, I know that my board has some life-lies on it right now that are fed by (and feed) guilt. The baking thing, for example. I love baking, but sometimes I do it not because I want to, but because I feel I have to. Because good mothers make their sons homemade energy bars instead of buying ones from the store, right?
I’ve got a vacation coming up soon, and I’m going to use your trick of showing things I’m NOT going to do. And spending lots of time with my boys, NOT catching up on all the chores I’m behind on, is going to be on the top of that list.
Regards,
Maritza
Hi Paul,
Thanks a lot for sharing your story. I think I’ll give TO DON’T list a try as well in my work as in my personal life.
Your post inspired me to change something about the boards I’m using (yes I’m using a couple of them instead of one). Because I decided, that I want to be using a physical board for both PK boards, the one in the office and the other one on my fridge I splitted the work between those too, so I didn’t have any personal stuff in my office. And I knew I needed an improvement here, because sometimes it’s nice to take a break and do something personal, even if you are at work. Also some personal things can be done on the way back home. The thing that I love about using any kind of GTD tool is that it frees my mind from thinking about things that need my attention, so I didn’t want to have those personal ones in my memory. What I did was taking some stickies from my fridge-PK and putting them on the inside of my iPad cover. I find it very useful.
Cheers