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I had an epiphany of sorts about this when working on a freelance project with a client who was particularly organized. They had a kanban board split up into I

I had an epiphany of sorts about this when working on a freelance project with a client who was particularly organized. They had a kanban board split up into Inbox (ideas and incoming features and bugs), Backlog (accepted tasks), In Progress (doing right now), Review (for others to look at), and Complete columns. At the beginning of a sprint, the project manager sat down for about 10 minutes and looked at all the cards in the inbox and decided if any should be moved to the backlog. He then rearranged the cards from most to least important. This prevented the need to think at all when working on the project - I just took the top card from the backlog and put it into in progress until it was done. I realized, why don't I do this for my own projects too? Since my own projects aren't paid, I for some reason think they should just be able to be done without organization. I've implemented this same system in Trello for arbitrary projects and it seems to work well when I use it. Also nice that it makes it easy to collaborate if relevant but that isn't required. It's a hard problem though - figuring out how to "Just Get Things DoneTM" is a skill that requires trial and error to figure out what you'll actually stick to, but in some ways is the most important thing to figure out. I also highly recommend the book The One Thing - my coach recommended it to me and though it started a little fluffy the second and third sections were solid. In short, doing less helps a lot. The Twelve Week Year is another book with some good ideas - instead of planning long into the future, plan only on a quarterly basis, and have that quarter align with your grand vision for the future. Happy to chat more about this, as it's a problem I've wrasseled with a lot too as a self-employed freelancer. My email's in my profile.

davidscolgan 8y ago
Another thought I once realized - I think early on in my career I heard about Agile and thought it meant "not planning at all". This seems to _not_ be true at all but I think it made me subtly opposed to planning. I now see that it is more about shorter iterations, and The Twelve Week Year talks a lot about effective "just in time" planning, on a day, week, and quarterly basis.
mezod 8y ago
Thanks for this David. Funnily, 5 years ago I developed my own personal kanban tool. It's still running on http://multikanban.com http://multikanban.com Of course Trello is a thousand times more powerful and polished. I was just sharing to show that I had my "personal kanban" phase in the past. It worked for some time... but for some reason I stopped really benefiting from it. The idea was to have multiple kanban boards easily accessible, where each board would be a project. "Todos", "Money", "Family", "Refurbish motorcycle", "Code projext X", etc. Of course it worked nicely for specific projects since it helps you be very critical about what gets done and what doesn't. But I think the problem I experienced there is that basically I ended up working on a single project, two at best. Like they were top priority and they never got finished, so I missed on everything else. I still have this problem now, that's why I try something different like having specific times of the day/week allocated to "main project", "sideproject", "money", etc. I just feel that the more thought I put into it, the more complex the system becomes, the less likely is it for me to follow it through. I did https://everyday.app https://everyday.app to sort of define a schedule of habits I want to follow through every day, and so I feel progress in all directions I want to work on. Thanks for the book recommendations :)
- davidscolgan 8y ago
  I very much identify with the struggle of lots of different projects. Another thing that's helped me recently is to make it "impossible not to" do the thing I want to do. I managed to solve my exercise problem by hiring a personal trainer. Now I lose $80 if I don't go to the gym at a specific time on Monday and Friday. I've not missed a day in months. I've wondered if with certain ways of arranging my environment if working on projects could be similarly solved in that they require no motivation or willpower because there's no other option. Cheers, and thanks for posting this question. Just writing out some of my ideas here is helpful since I'm certainly working on this right now too.
- gomangogo 8y ago
  The best way to sustain everyday.app is by making it open source and use cloudstorage (with encryption) to sync it. You don't need to make people paying $12. Great app.
  - mezod 8y ago
    Do you have any experience monetizing open source projects? Like, server costs are definitely the most negligible of all costs of running a project!
    - gomangogo 8y ago
      I am assuming that you are doing something for the community and that you will definitely get contributors. The project can have more impact if so. Look at this open-source app to have an idea of what kind of project I am talking about : https://github.com/laurent22/joplin https://github.com/laurent22/joplin
  - czbond 8y ago
    I disagree. I signed up for the free initial plan of "everyday" yesterday (before seeing this thread - actually one from indiehackers). Yes, I could do something in Excel spreadsheets - but $12 is more than useful.
taurath 8y ago
Second the ideas of a 12 week year - I find a lot of my “really want to do” ends up being a “this year” thing, which ends up becoming a “next year” thing. If you are not likely to work on something in the next 12 weeks, for me at least it should be on a long term list and not expected to be done at all.
j45 8y ago
A personal / small project Kanban is useful. When I'm doing well with it, I let my GTD refer me to the project's Kanban, and sometimes I have even organized my GTD list as Kanban. Appreciate the other books you recommended. I have posted the books that helped me in this thread too.

davidscolgan 8y ago

Another thought I once realized - I think early on in my career I heard about Agile and thought it meant "not planning at all". This seems to _not_ be true at all but I think it made me subtly opposed to planning. I now see that it is more about shorter iterations, and The Twelve Week Year talks a lot about effective "just in time" planning, on a day, week, and quarterly basis.

mezod 8y ago

Thanks for this David. Funnily, 5 years ago I developed my own personal kanban tool. It's still running on http://multikanban.com http://multikanban.com Of course Trello is a thousand times more powerful and polished. I was just sharing to show that I had my "personal kanban" phase in the past. It worked for some time... but for some reason I stopped really benefiting from it. The idea was to have multiple kanban boards easily accessible, where each board would be a project. "Todos", "Money", "Family", "Refurbish motorcycle", "Code projext X", etc. Of course it worked nicely for specific projects since it helps you be very critical about what gets done and what doesn't. But I think the problem I experienced there is that basically I ended up working on a single project, two at best. Like they were top priority and they never got finished, so I missed on everything else. I still have this problem now, that's why I try something different like having specific times of the day/week allocated to "main project", "sideproject", "money", etc. I just feel that the more thought I put into it, the more complex the system becomes, the less likely is it for me to follow it through. I did https://everyday.app https://everyday.app to sort of define a schedule of habits I want to follow through every day, and so I feel progress in all directions I want to work on. Thanks for the book recommendations :)

davidscolgan 8y ago
I very much identify with the struggle of lots of different projects. Another thing that's helped me recently is to make it "impossible not to" do the thing I want to do. I managed to solve my exercise problem by hiring a personal trainer. Now I lose $80 if I don't go to the gym at a specific time on Monday and Friday. I've not missed a day in months. I've wondered if with certain ways of arranging my environment if working on projects could be similarly solved in that they require no motivation or willpower because there's no other option. Cheers, and thanks for posting this question. Just writing out some of my ideas here is helpful since I'm certainly working on this right now too.
gomangogo 8y ago
The best way to sustain everyday.app is by making it open source and use cloudstorage (with encryption) to sync it. You don't need to make people paying $12. Great app.
- mezod 8y ago
  Do you have any experience monetizing open source projects? Like, server costs are definitely the most negligible of all costs of running a project!
  - gomangogo 8y ago
    I am assuming that you are doing something for the community and that you will definitely get contributors. The project can have more impact if so. Look at this open-source app to have an idea of what kind of project I am talking about : https://github.com/laurent22/joplin https://github.com/laurent22/joplin
- czbond 8y ago
  I disagree. I signed up for the free initial plan of "everyday" yesterday (before seeing this thread - actually one from indiehackers). Yes, I could do something in Excel spreadsheets - but $12 is more than useful.

taurath 8y ago

Second the ideas of a 12 week year - I find a lot of my “really want to do” ends up being a “this year” thing, which ends up becoming a “next year” thing. If you are not likely to work on something in the next 12 weeks, for me at least it should be on a long term list and not expected to be done at all.

j45 8y ago

A personal / small project Kanban is useful. When I'm doing well with it, I let my GTD refer me to the project's Kanban, and sometimes I have even organized my GTD list as Kanban. Appreciate the other books you recommended. I have posted the books that helped me in this thread too.