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.

It's About Communication: PK Interview with Trent Hone

Trent Hone uses Personal Kanban to manage teams, to consult, and to help his family get things done. In this interview, Trent talks about how he uses Personal Kanban and what changes its fostered in his family's stress level, his ability to complete work, and his teams' camaraderie.This is the first in a series of weekly interviews of Personal Kanban users, practitioners, and thinkers. Watch for how they build their boards and how it makes them feel.

Clarity > Coffee

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Okay. So I recognize the title of this post might stir up some controversy, especially among my fellow coffee enthusiasts. Not to mention it undoubtedly puts me at risk of getting exiled from my beloved adopted home, Seattle. And yes, perhaps it even seems a tad hypocritical how I'm writing this while enjoying a double shot at my local overpriced third wave roastery.But I digress...First off, I am in no way suggesting you - or we - instead consume thimbles of “energizing” wheatgrass rather than continue our relationship with our BFF, Joe. Let’s be honest, Joe energizes us, he makes us alert. He leaves us happy. Sure, these effects can be fleeting, the result of the temporary dopamine response - “the motivation molecule” - caffeine triggers in our brain. This causes us to build up our tolerance and increase our dependence on Joe’s services more often than we might take notice of. And when we try to fight our need for Joe, his absence leaves us tired, and cranky, impairing our focus, our memory, our ability to plan, our processing speed, and our decision-making capabilities. All that notwithstanding, Joe’s often the first one we call on to boost our mental acuity and usher us through our midday slump.Now I respect the power of confirmation bias enough to know that at this point, I could take this post in one of two directions. There’s a surfeit of scientific research out there that supports the link between coffee and productivity and conversely, enough to suggest it wrecks havoc on our teeth, bones, liver...in addition to our productivity.Neither of those are where I am going with this.My issue is with reliance on coffee as a first responder - for motivation, for making us less anxious, for combatting the brain fog so many of us knowledge workers experience. In those cases where our mental performance needs a boost, the dopamine release we chase through the caffeine in our coffee is little more than a quick fix. The short bursts of energy we experience simply aren’t sustainable, and so we’re forced to reach for yet another double- or triple-shot to maintain its effects. When we do, the resulting adrenaline rush proves counterproductive, leading to more irritability, more stress and ultimately, we crash.That’s the thing about Joe: he’s temporary. Joe has commitment issues. And while he breeds dependency he’s simply not in it for the duration.Clarity? Now clarity is in it for the long haul. You want to tame anxiety, elevate your mood, achieve focus at a sustainable pace while creating good work habits in the process?

Clarity’s your huckleberry.That’s because the brain hates ambiguity. In fact, it LOATHES it. Two of the brain’s primary functions are to reduce risk and optimize rewards. It satisfies the second need with coffee. It satisfies both with, well, care to venture a guess?You got it. With clarity.We fear what we can’t see, what we don’t understand. By their very nature knowledge workers - creating “products” that often have no tangible steps, no physical output - operate in a world of ambiguity. And we know how the brain feels about that. The brain wants assurances. It wants to know upfront what output it can expect from an input and so it wants to be certain it’s equipped with all the (pre-existing) knowledge it needs to address any situation. When it has too little information to go on, when it encounters the unfamiliar and perceives it as a threat (whether real or imagined), its fight or flight mechanism is engaged and anxiety results.Enter clarity.Studies show anxiety diminishes and success rates soar when abstract goals - the very nature of knowledge work - are clarified, when they are transformed into concrete and attainable steps. Such is the case when we visualize work on a Personal Kanban. Especially for knowledge workers, getting all those amorphous tasks out of your head and easily visualized on a board demystifies your priorities, your tradeoffs, and makes work manageable. Evolutionary biology teaches us that having processed images long before it did text or language, the brain deciphers images tens of thousands of times faster than it does text. Not only does externalizing goals by mapping them out on a kanban increase the likelihood of achieving them, visualizing progress big or small results in a rewarding boost of dopamine.As we see with our reaction to coffee, we then chase that dopamine release. We adjust our behavior to trigger a consistent flow of it by perpetuating the very action that makes us happy. Clarity and the completion it fosters gives us the focus, and the motivation to continue this virtuous work cycle.So the next time your brain needs a boost, consider getting your dopamine-fix from your board...not your barista.For more on how visualizing your work (and limiting your WIP!) with Personal Kanban can improve your clarity and ultimately, your effectiveness, register for our FREE webinar.

I'm Having A Creative Emergency

It can happen.It does happen.We are being good Personal Kanbaners, we are limiting our WIP. Suddenly we have a burst of inspiration and we just HAVE to get something done.Should we do it? Should we blow our WIP and jump into this new task that has set our mind ablaze?The answer is ... maybe yes.

Fuel and Motivation

Sometimes we plod.We get ourselves into projects or situations where the only way out is through. We find ourselves on the treadmill. Maybe being productive, but feeling our passion waning or perhaps even gone.I awoke each day over the last week feeling very much this way. I could not find motivation for action. I could still act, of course. I wasn’t in a coma or unable to move or think. I just didn’t feel the spark of motivation.One morning, at about five am, I was staring at the ceiling thinking about this. “Mister Personal Kanban isn’t allowed to be unmotivated,” I thought. But I was.Mulling over motivation, I came to the thought of a car. What motivates a car? Fuel. Gasoline or electricity, certainly. But it’s part of a system. A bucket of gasoline or a fully charged battery does no good without tires, steering, and place to go.Fuel therefore is only useful in a system that allows motivation.I ran all over the Seattle area the last few days brooding about this.What is the fuel of my motivational system? How can I get more fuel? How can I fine-tune the system?Here is what I’ve created:I believe we are motivated by negative and positive pressures, projects, ideals and short term goals. These are our real fuel. How we combine them is the system.

My Negative Fuel: Money

Filthy Lucre

Like most people, I find myself thinking about money. I spend way too much of my time concerned with it. Retirement, bills, unexpected expenses, the lot of it.I am starting with it because our negative fuel tends to become preoccupation. Negative fuel is important because our fears can guide us away from harm. When it becomes preoccupation, however, it is a distraction at best and a derailleur at worst.

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My Positive Fuel: Shared Epiphanies

This is Beth

So this person here is Beth Wibbles Howell and she’s a truly wonderful person. She works in Milwaukee and has been working at the same place for 14 years - nearly unheard of in IT. I haven’t worked with her for two years, but her dedication and interest in making her workplace better for her and her teams is inspiring. I get to meet a lot of people in my work. There is no better moment than when I’m working with a person or with a team and everyone involved has an epiphany at the same time. Something enduring is born at moments like that. With Beth and others I’ve watched people change how their teams worked for the better. When they change their teams, they change their lives...and mine as well..

Project: Modus Institute

My Project: MI

My current major project is launching Modus Institute, an online school that focuses on cutting edge management techniques. The nature of personal, team, and organizational work is in a state of upheaval, yet we are still engaging in management techniques that are proven to fail. (See, I’m so into it that I’m talking about the project and not what a project is…)I believe we all need an active project as part of our motivational fuel system. The project is a container for hopes, desires, and potential - which encapsulate a view of our future. In the project, we set a desired attainable future state. The project is not a wish, it is implementable. Without a project, it is unlikely we have direction.

Ideals: Understanding the Whys of Our World

Finding the Whys

Tonianne and I have traveled the world working with clients, putting on Kaizen Camps, and speaking at conferences. We’ve seen mundane, beautiful, terrifying, and joyous things. Sometimes all at the same time.The picture to the left was taken in November 2014 in Bangalore, India, by Tonianne. It is of a woman hanging up her laundry. The pile to the left of her is literally a pile of smoldering garbage. The small bucket near her left leg is what the clothes were washed in.Out of the picture is the tent in which she lived with her little daughter, who was a painfully beautiful little girl with deep bright eyes that conveyed a sharp little mind that had seen more than her few years should have allowed. She was nowhere near as clean as the laundry.I could write a hundred pages about the few moments we were there. But suffice it to say, there are times where I am with people like Beth, where I can make a difference. And times like on the streets of Bangalore where I am utterly powerless.There are things in this world that have no “why”, but I’m drawn to try to understand them nonetheless. Maybe as I do, I can find the nooks and crannies where I can make a difference and not simply be overwhelmed. Ideals drive us to places we don’t want to go and urge us to attain the unattainable. We need our Don Quixotes and our Sancho Panzas.

Short Term Goal: Finish Something!

Value Lies in Completion

Every day you don’t finish something, you didn’t finish something. That has a direct impact on your psyche. We need to set goals and finish them. I find each day (this shouldn’t be too shocking) that I need to select a few things from my Personal Kanban’s backlog that I must finish today. Then I get them done.I try to have a few other rules for me personally.

1. Make it sharable: Get the short term goal into someone else’s hands. For me it might be a blog post to the world or it could be some preliminary writing I show Tonianne.

2. Make it valuable:Try to finish at least one thing per day that you conceive to be and end product. This doesn’t always happen, but I find that if I try to do this I will do it often. Creating value creates momentum.

3. Admire your work: For many, our first temptation when looking at something we’ve done is to see what could be improved. Things can always be improved. But that thing you’ve just created didn’t exist before you did it. Take some time to be proud of your work and let it surprise you. There will be time for editing later. For now, admire your own work.

Endgame

Motivational Fuel Board

So I made this visual control, to keep me focused on what’s important and what is driving me. This shows my personal motivational system and the elements that fuel it. The short term I’ll update daily, the project I’ll update every so often. And we’ll see how the others change.