For Context, Clarity, & Continuous Improvement, Get Rid of That To-Do List

Make list.Become overwhelmed.Cross off low-hanging fruit.Feel good (momentarily).Tackle next easiest task.Repeat.Sounds familiar, doesn't it? But why simply optimize for productivity, when you can shoot for effectiveness?Those seemingly interminable, anxiety-inducing to-do lists - we've all been beholden to them. But if context, clarity, and continuous improvement are what you're looking for, there just might be a better option.For something with such a staggering amount of information, to-do lists fail miserably at providing the context necessary to effectively prioritize our work, understand and communicate our capacity, or surface issues so we can address them in real-time, preventing them from recurring.Rather than create a static, task-focused, prescriptive inventory of your to-dos - inviting little more than an opportunity to react - visualizing your work on a flexible, flow-focused Personal Kanban transforms those to-dos into a narrative of your work that promotes cognitive ease and invites informed action. Tasks are situated in context, options and priorities become obvious, and emergent patterns (like recurring bottlenecks) give us the necessary feedback to invite discussion, collaboration, and/or improvement.

Dream BIG...But Get Those Dreams in Writing

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Perchance to Dream?

No doubt you’ve seen evidence of its ascendance: the cottage industry that’s become a multi-billion dollar “motivational industrial complex” of sorts. Its rallying cry

If you think it, you can achieve it!

is plastered just about everywhere these days. From gilt-framed posters of eagles soaring high above alpine peaks, to bland, bald, and bare-footed Ziggy offering up a side of sentimentality with every calendar-month cartoon affirmation, to treacly-tidings engraved on necklaces and bracelets “Perfect for the graduate in your life,” all echo a variation of that familiar exhortation:

Dream the impossible dream!

However, simply dreaming the impossible dream can actually prove counter-productive, rendering many goals quixotic at best.

Ay! There’s the Rub!

The brain is a pattern-seeking, clarity-needing, ambiguity-hating energy hog. When it comes to actual goal achievement, it needs tangible, achievable steps it can carry out one after the other, in sequence. It likewise wants these steps to be innocuous enough that they don't trigger a fear response by engaging the amygdala - the brain's fight-or-flight mechanism. Science shows when goals are made concrete and then broken down into constituent parts that are actionable, the likelihood for success is significantly higher than if they simply remained a thought exercise.Merely fantasizing about a goal isn’t just de-motivating, it can lead us to self-sabotage. That’s because the brain has difficulty differentiating between projected success and success that has been realized. As such, it produces serotonin regardless. This “happiness molecule” tricks the brain into thinking it’s already achieved what is otherwise still an aspiration, thus preventing any impetus for follow-through.Holding big audacious life goals in our head, or even our daily honey-do list for that matter, consumes energy. It zaps our metabolism, draining us physically and emotionally. Writing down all the things we would like to accomplish not only helps us clarify them, reducing uncertainty and easing anxiety, it likewise holds us accountable and lightens our cognitive load. The subsequent dopamine release - the "motivation molecule" - assists with the momentum needed to see those tasks to fruition.

To Grunt and Sweat

So if it matters to you, and it needs to get done, put pen to paper. Not only will writing down goals help you clarify them, breaking them into actionable steps will help you make progress towards them. The act of seeing your progress will in turn trigger the reward response, incentivizing you towards completion.So the next time your inner bard contemplates whether 

To PK or not to PK?

remember, writing down your goals and decomposing them into actionable steps on your Personal Kanban is an essential part of the achievement process. The visual and kinesthetic feedback produced by completion is a reward in and of itself, creating a virtuous cycle in which confidence, motivation, and momentum can transform those seemingly impossible dreams into reality.

For more on how Personal Kanban can make your goals actionable and achievable, sign up for one of our

upcoming webinars,

or register for our

online clas

s.

* The author offers apologies to Cervantes, Shakespeare,

Peter O'Toole

 (whose voice she learned, was actually dubbed), and any Literature majors who might be reading this.

How to Stay Focused In a World Full of Distractions

The vibration of your mobile phone calendar reminds you of your 11 am conference call. Dots flashing on your Fitbit guilting you to get in your steps at lunchtime. Aural and visual radiators on your desktop alerting you to additions to your inbox, changes made to Dropbox, and yet another message. 

Ubiquitous numerical displays incessantly signal friend requests, status changes, and other social media updates that, in both Pavlovian and FOMO fashion, condition you to keep myriad tabs open responding as they beckon. 

So what about that otherwise simple “five-minute memo” you sat down to compose almost an hour ago? Given all the distractions you’ve already had to contend with you’re now 47 minutes in and have but two intelligible lines are written.

A Word on Distractions

For better or for worse, our brains are hardwired to respond when something new is introduced into an otherwise stable environment. Optimized to minimize risk and maximize reward, the brain is primed to detect, remember, and ascertain what type of outcome the seemingly unfamiliar will provide.

It’s not simply technology that is responsible for our distractions. Human interruptions are also a factor, as are cognitive ones like lack of clarity, self-doubt, and fear, all of which can invite procrastination. 

There are likewise more stealthy interruptions - the “neural noise” we try but seldom succeed at suppressing: the aircon set too high or too low, the aroma of freshly-baked cinnamon buns beckoning from the break room, triggering a rumble in our stomach, stimulating our salivary glands, compelling us to drop what we are doing mid-task and tend to this newly-realized "need" at once. 

Any deviation in our environment or our expectation of something within our environment can compromise focus. To include noticing our colleague in the adjoining office now sports a fresh-coating of jet black hair where little - very little - existed yesterday. In and of itself, acknowledging and responding to the unfamiliar or unexpected is not necessarily a bad thing. 

After all, exploration of the new is how we learn and, perhaps more importantly, how we were able to survive as a species. Detecting an atypical smell, a sudden rustle of leaves, or the slinking of a shadow where one previously did not exist kept prehistoric man from succumbing to his predators. What does prove problematic about novelty in the context of knowledge work is when it compels us to shift our attention mid-task, naively anticipating a smooth return to the task we first shifted our attention from.

Context Switching

We live in an era where wending our way through the daily deluge of digital distractions has become synonymous with how knowledge workers function. When pulses, pings and pop-ups jockey for our attention and task-switching (also known as context-switching) typifies the way we’ve come to work, it’s a wonder our already drunk-monkey minds are capable of completing any of the things we’ve begun. Let alone complete them thoughtfully, and with quality. 

We have a tendency to shift from one unfinished task to another without any correlation between them. Spilling your attention all over the place and calling it multitasking neither works for you, nor for your team’s efficiency. The problem with context switching at work is that we are unable to stay focused on a particular task entirely. In addition to that, it reflects on our performance and overall productivity. 

Task-switching begets more task-switching - not completion. This is often attributed to “the Zeigarnik Effect. A phenomenon in which information and tasks left incomplete don’t leave our minds. Instead, we dwell on those incomplete tasks, and those intrusive thoughts render us vulnerable to distractions. 

The energy that consumes - the metabolism task-switching requires - drains our cognitive capacity, causing frustration, burnout, impeding focus, and inviting error and rework, preventing us from realizing our optimal potential. When we task-switch we break our flow state. And you can’t achieve flow without a healthy constraint.

Now, where was I? Anyone who has found themselves asking this question while reading the same page over and over upon returning from a distraction knows there is seldom a seamless transition when shifting gears, especially when dealing with high-cognitive tasks that are dissimilar in size and/or type. 

As is evidenced by the proliferation of scholarship in cognitive science, neuro performance, and the growing sub-field of “interruption science,” task-switching has reached epic proportions in the 21st Century workplace, the negative effects of which can not be overstated. Unfortunately, the impacts of this executive function are often underestimated. It’s like my grandmother used to say: “Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it.”

In an ideal world there won’t be any task-switching but here in reality it is inevitable. Also, it is harmful to our concentration. With that being said, you need to evaluate when you tend to switch context and look for opportunities to reduce it by sorting your priorities.

The Science behind Instant Gratification

Instant gratification refers to receiving less but immediate benefits instead of waiting for better ones in the future. We live in times when we can get almost everything we want anytime and anywhere we want it. As a result, we become more impatient and distracted. Moreover, our ability to stay focused on a big project in the long term is doomed. 

A great example of instant and delayed gratification is the well-known Marshmallow Experiment. In the 1960s the psychologist Walter Mischel conducted a study on childhood self-control. He gave the children a choice - eat one marshmallow now or wait and get two later. Turns out more kids than adults can resist the instant gratification urge. In a follow-up study, it is reported that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had better self-control when they became adults.

Self-control is a very powerful source that can take your productivity and performance far. To stay focused on what’s important, you need to look at the big picture. Most important, be aware of your urges to instant gratitude. You can train your brain by purposely delaying acting on them. 

Hack Your Brain & Stay Focused

When it comes to optimal processing speed, the brain processes high-cognitive tasks sequentially - one thing at a time, one after the other - rather than in parallel. When there is a disruption in that workflow, we incur not just a carry-over cost from the first task, but a ramp-up cost for the second. The more complex the task, the more our cognitive ability is degraded, the more processing speed and quality we sacrifice in the shift, setting off a cycle that is nothing if not vicious.

Enter Personal Kanban

Limiting WIP

Limiting work in process (WIP), the second of Personal Kanban’s two rules, enables the flow-state we mentioned. Work in process, also known as work in progress, is the amount of work we have ongoing at the moment. When we don’t limit our WIP we are more susceptible to the immediate gratification we get from responding to a distraction. 

WIP limits encourage you to stay focused on a single task and complete it more efficiently. In addition to that, it can help you identify bottlenecks. Limiting WIP reflects on the quality of your work performance. 

In the absence of Personal Kanban's first rule visualize your work, the penalty for taking on that new task without completing tasks already in flight is never made explicit, and so we continue to overtax our “system of production,” our brains. 

Visualize Your Work

Visualizing work and limiting WIP compels us to stay focused on and complete our priorities, and complete them with quality. And that completion comes with its own reward. The brain thrives on completion; accomplishing a goal literally feels good. 

“If you can’t see it, you can’t manage it.” Visualization helps us to better understand the workflow and manage it effectively. A Kanban board gives you a visual representation of your tasks and their status. It helps you stay focused on the current workload. In addition, you can spot potential issues in your process and prevent them in the future.

Final Thoughts

A study posits that a chemical reaction in the brain occurs when we so much as say the word “done” upon completing a task, no matter the task’s size. When we achieve a goal or overcome a challenge, dopamine - the neurotransmitter that regulates the brain's pleasure center - is triggered, leaving us calm, confident, and focused. And let's face it - those feelings can be addictive. We are then primed for another "hit" of dopamine, inclined to repeat the behavior that triggered the dopamine reward in the first place and so anticipating the pleasure that comes with completion sets into motion a virtuous cycle. 

To be sure, interruptions are the nature of the beast when it comes to knowledge work because the “gemba” - the metaphorical workshop where we create value - is in our heads.

So the next time you need to drown out the cacophony of social and aural and visual and neural noise from your colleagues and your phones and your monkey minds simply to get that five-minute memo off your plate, remember how a boost of dopamine dulls the allure of even the shiniest of squirrels.

Say goodbye to poor planning and interruptions. Get Modus Institute’s Platinum Subscription and learn how to visualize, prioritize and stay focused on your workload.

Sleep: Your Workflow's Most Important Form of Slack

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It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. ~ John Steinbeck

In Personal Kanban, Jim and I discuss how workflow should be optimized for throughput, not capacity. Work shouldn’t “fit” into your day but rather, it should flow. Much like how a freeway grinds to a halt when its capacity is exceeded, so too do people who are overloaded experience physical and mental gridlock. As with any system - animate, mechanistic, social, or ecological - the importance of incorporating slack to absorb and /or respond to variation, create efficient processing, and maximize performance is not simply good practice, it’s indispensable.Recently, a series of disconcerting conversations caused me to reflect on how much we tend to undervalue our most important form of slack: sleep.

• A  taxi driver shared how he works 12+ hours per day, with one hour off for lunch, seven days per week because as he explained, “I can sleep when I’m dead”;

• A nail technician who works 7 days each week, 10+ hours per day, and only takes off holidays expressed pride in her “work ethic” while dismissing her colleagues who work 5-6 days per week as “lazy”; and

• A software developer boasted he could - and in fact, does - exist on a diet of Red Bull, chocolate-covered espresso beans, and as little as 2-3 hours of a caffeine-induced coma...but admitted he greeted each morning in a haze of stupor.

Sure these folks might be “productive,” but how effective are they really in the long-term?

I spend endless days at a time without enough sleep. At first, normal activities become annoying. When you are too tired to eat, you really need some sleep. A few days later, things become strange. Loud noises become louder and more startling, familiar sounds become unfamiliar, and life reinvents itself as a surrealist dream. ~ Henry Rollins

We wear our busyness like a badge of honor. It has become our default way of existing.Sleep, we rationalize, is for the weak and ironically, for “slackers.” We see it not as a function essential to our existence but as a reward to be earned. And when we do finally deem ourselves “worthy” of a healthy night’s sleep we “cheat” in an attempt to compensate for the hours we’ve been deprived of.From the National Sleep Foundation:

Sleep experts say most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night for optimum performance, health and safety. When we don't get adequate sleep, we accumulate a sleep debt that can be difficult to "pay back" if it becomes too big. The resulting sleep deprivation has been linked to health problems such as obesity and high blood pressure, negative mood and behavior, decreased productivity, and safety issues in the home, on the job, and on the road.

Beyond the obvious self-destructive nature of burning the proverbial candle at both ends, fatigue impedes our brain activity which leads to lack of clarity, which necessitates more effort, increases mistakes, diminishes judgment, and further contributes to our WIP.So long as we view sleep as a luxury we will dismiss it as waste, de-prioritizing it when in actuality, it’s the ONLY thing absolutely vital to our workflow.Does it really need to be stated?Humans cannot live without sleep.So I propose we begin looking at sleep as integral to our workflow. Slack is not simply vital to your Personal Kanban, it’s vital for smooth, efficient flow and maximizing performance.If you frame sleep as part of your work, unfinished sleep becomes WIP. We then struggle with focus, multitasking and task-switching become inevitable, creating a vicious cycle that interferes with the quality of other parts of our life. When we are sleep deprived, our WIP limit should actually be reduced.

I work in the quiet of home 7-8am to sort out things that are stuck or unresolved. Only after I have landed that thinking do I go into the office. ~  Tiffany Overton

A quiet mind, a fresh perspective leads to improved memory, longer attention span, sustainable  learning, and improved judgement.Sleep better. Perform better. It really is that simple.

On Working Intentionally: The "Thinking Ticket"

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The quality of art is that it makes people who are otherwise always looking outward, turn inward. ~ the Dalai Lama

 There’s a certain irony in the fact that knowledge workers are often afforded little time to do what it is they are enlisted to do: think. In an era defined by constant connectivity, information overload, ceaseless distractions, and the perfidious fetishization of multitasking our days, our processes, our modus operandi is increasingly becoming reactive.Our "fast thinking brain" as Daniel Kahneman refers to it, helps us wend our way through this neural noise with the aid of subconscious shortcuts or, cognitive biases. So we traverse our lives myopically through a sequence of habits, intuition, emotions, one assumption after the next, to the point that our focus turns to frenzy and the output of our work precludes us from taking a serious and vital look at what inputs affect it. Over reliance on this fast, shortcut-driven “system one thinking” can compromise our understanding of what it is we’re actually doing, and why.For innovation, for improvement, for personal fulfillment, this type of workflow is not sustainable.Science estimates the human brain processes on average between 50,000-80,000 conscious and subconscious thoughts per day, and so reliance on heuristics is both an efficient and necessary use of our brainpower.But it’s not always effective.That’s because these shortcuts - the assumptions that drive us - are not always correct.In an age of overload, what happens to the brain when we silence the neural noise and take a moment to simply pause to consider what we are really doing, and why?Unplugging, incorporating ritualized pauses into the workday breaks the cycle of assumption, shifting us from the emotional, to the rational “slow thinking brain.” Disengaging and taking a cognitive time-out engages our "system two thinking," shifting our consciousness from the habitual, the reptilian, to the intentional, helping us solve problems thoughtfully, make decisions more deliberately, and generate new ideas.Looking for more EUREKA! moments? Add a “Thinking” ticket to your Personal Kanban. Unplug. Look out the window. Take a walk. Break the cycle of reaction by tapping into your creative mind.This article was inspired by a conversation with Maggie Churchville. For more on how Personal Kanban can help you be more intentional about your work and by extension your life, register for our FREE webinar, our online class, or our next workshop  Personal Kanban for Knowledge Work, Seattle 12-13 April.