It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post. Part of the delay came from the fact that I had a week-long engineering seminar at a college, but part of it is also just the amount of work I have to do. Not only am I running Circuit Wizardry and attempting to maintain two products on the market, and working on college essays for application season, but I am actively designing and building a thrust vectored rocket, as well as working thirty-two hour weeks as an automotive technician. All of this to say that I’ve got a lot on my plate. In this blog post, I talk about sprint planning, the idea of a kanban board, and how it has helped me go from a disorganized mess of thoughts and ideas to a structured approach to success.
What is a kanban board?
To put it simply, a kanban board is a fancier and better structured version of a to-do list.
This type of organization is typically called a kanban board or a sprint planning board. It allows you to isolate certain projects/work that needs to be done, and separate it from work that is not such a high priority. Having a place to get all of your responsibilities out can help clear brain fog and help you enter a flow state much, much faster by focusing on one problem at a time.
Story points & Time estimates
Sometimes, simply writing down your ideas isn’t always going to be enough for you. Another incredibly useful part of kanban boards is the ability to manage your time effectively through story points and time estimates. For example, you may have an entry like this in your board:
Labeling entries with the amount of time you estimate they will take to complete helps decide what should stay in the backlog and what should be put in the to-do list. Furthermore, it gives you a good idea of how many hours of work you have on your plate, and visually shows your progress in knocking out these hours of progress.
How am I using a kanban board to succeed?
This is all fine and well, but how am I using it specifically? For the past few weeks, I’ve had a physical kanban board up on my wall. Made out of masking tape and sticky notes, it’s crude but works great for me. Every single thing I’ve had to do has been through the kanban board, given a time estimate, and moved through all columns.
Having a board such as this one posted above my work area keeps me accountable. Every morning when I wake up, I see the board. This helps me stay on track and continue following the kanban board.
Conclusion
It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of work you may have to do. It can truly feel like you have too much on your plate, and you’ll never be able to make it through. Kanban boards help organize this chaos and give a more objective measure on whether you truly do have too much on your plate. With time estimates as well as multiple columns for isolating your thoughts, these boards can help an incredible amount with planning.
I know that it’s helped me – I’ve been significantly more productive recently. Not only with model rocketry projects, either. I’ve got some other projects in the pipeline right now. I’ll reveal more about those later 🙂
Until next time.
