When I first started using Personal Kanban the one thing that excited me immediately was how much I wanted to use it with my daughter and at home with my family.And so my journey began. At the time my daughter was 11 and continuing her religious education preparing to become confirmed. There was so much she needed to get done before being able to complete the process and become confirmed that anytime we even mentioned the subject she became clearly overwhelmed. That's when I decided to introduce her to Personal Kanban. We set up a Confirmation kidzban.
kidzban to complete religious education projects
She was so excited to be able to visualize all her work that immediately she felt a sense of relief. Once we got the tasks all up on the board she realized most of the tasks were actually waiting for actions from others. "Oh that's not so much work." she said. While it appears to be a lot of WIP, some of those tasks were actually waiting on action from a parent. Her first use of a Kanban was a complete success. She has completed her religious education and did receive her confirmation.
When my daughter was a little older she was a competitive swimmer. When you swim for a long time you hit many peaks and valleys. One season my daughter was feeling incredibly defeated in the water. Although practicing very hard day in and day out she was not seeing the results she wanted in the water. She was losing confidence FAST! So I thought about it and at the time I was experimenting with using Kanban for many projects so I thought why not? Let's see if a kanban can gain her some confidence back in the pool. We sat down and talked about the times she wanted to achieve in the water, what her times were at that point, and what times she needed in order to qualify for the Junior Olympics. We wrote her goal times on post-it's, and set up the Confidence kidzban.
Using Personal Kanban to build confidence
The Personal Kanban consisted of 3 major swim lanes, a BACKLOG of times, those being the times she was going into the meet with, her seed times. The WIP lane was the goal times she set for each event. The COMPLETED lane was called Goal Times Completed. When she had achieved the goals she set in the WIP lane they would be moved over. Having the times visualized on a board before we left for the meet was huge for her. When she posted the times up on the board she began to see the differences and began to believe yes this is totally something I can achieve. Not only because she hit some of her goals, but also because when we looked at the board after moving the first two events of the meet over to the completed swim lane, it felt tangible to her. She could actually look at the board and see her goals being met.
moving goals over on the confidence kanban
After the second day of swimming we still had success, and even though she only completed one goal on her Personal Kanban board she was extremely proud of her work in the pool on this afternoon. The board has caused her to realize that confidence isn’t only about achieving those goals, it’s about seeing her work in progress. Along the way her confidence will get stronger and stronger with each goal that is met. The main goal of this Personal Kanban was not just about achieving all new times, a very difficult task for any level competitive swimmer. It was also about giving a 12-year-old athlete her confidence back. According to her, even though all goals were not met and moved into the completed lane YET, they will be. Can you apply Personal Kanban to help confidence? Ask my 12 year old and she will tell you, yes you can.
This is an updated post that originally appeared on the Nothing is Out of Reach blog.