Fun Friday Resources

/

Sometimes—and hear me out on this—you need to find a way to manage your TASK AVOIDANCE. No, it’s true, and here’s one way to do it: The Eisenhower Matrix.

Developed by Dwight Eisenhower to deal with the hurly-burly of whatever he was doing at the time (WWII ETO, NATO, Columbia University, or, you know, President of the U.S.), it’s a super simple concept. If you look at the illustration to the left, you probably won’t even need to read the two articles I’m linking. But you should go look at them anyway: “Eisenhower Matrix: Master Productivity and Eliminate Noise" from Farnam Street, and “Going beyond the Eisenhower Matrix” at Teaminator. (Farnam Street has another, more rigorous version for truly we’re-all-going-to-die-here-aren’t-we situations, “The Decision Matrix: How to Prioritize What Matters.”)

And if you’re just joining us—and haven’t read the book—let me show you kanban. Kanban comes from Japan, originally developed to help with tracking materials management. But what a beauty of simplicity and effectiveness!

It's especially useful when you have too many things to procrastinate and they're beginning to pile up. Your best bet is to head over to personalkanban.com and read all about it.  Super easy, super fluid, super efficient.

tl;dr version:

  1. Visualize your workflow; write every task on a sticky note. Place them on a whiteboard/wall in full view of your workspace. Divide the board into three columns: To Do, Doing, Done.

  2. Limit your workflow: have only three, no more than five sticky notes in the Doing column.

As Benson/Barry (at personalkanban.com) describe the process, the rest of the value of kanban manifests itself through these two key concepts. You start to pay attention to what you’re paying attention to. You’ll begin to get an idea of the tasks you’re avoiding and why. You’ll begin to examine your work practices as you watch the flow of sticky notes.41 You’ll begin to adapt the system to your needs.

So what happens if you take your kanban sticky notes and rearrange them into an Eisenhower Matrix? Probably the heat death of the universe or the singularity. I wouldn’t risk it. Cras melior est.