January 2023 has been difficult for me without a plan to be going on with.
I know I posted something towards planning 2023, but there weren’t any goals – not SMART, not HARD, not even getting better.
I’ve been fretting about it since.
But I did some reading when I injured my hand, and one of the books reminded me about Kanban (see below).
Highlights from January 2023
So, with the injured hand, I had to bow out of the novella challenge, but I made it to 8 novellas in 8 months. With those, and all my accumulataed short stories, there’s a lot to publish this year.
We took Clever Girl for a lot of walks, including the beach. And watched a lot of tv, including an interesting Agatha Christie biography. Plus, I read a lot – 11 of my 2023 reading goal of 100 books.
• Getting On • Joy at Work • Sacred Rest • Stop Making Others Rich • Identity Designed • Stop Listening to the Customer • Total Rethink • The Visual MBA • Starting a Successful Business • Brand Now • The Kinfolk Entrepreneur •
As well as kanban, I read a lot about business, though you probably won’t see a difference at this end.
Kanban
Kanban is a Japanese methodology developed by Toyota in the 1940s as a scheduling process for lean manufacturing. At the time, their focus was small batch manufacturing, and they used it as a system for reordering compononents.
In the early 2000s, Microsoft redveloped the process for software development as a way to balance demand with capacity.
Essentially, the process has three segments; to-do, doing, and done.
To monitor progress, you start with a board divided into three columns (one for each segment), and write all of the tasks in the process on a sticky note and stick them in the to-do column.
When you start work, you move the first note into the doing column, and when you’ve finished, the done column. Now and again, you may need to move a task back into the to-do column. That’s okay; if you can see it, you won’t forget about it.
This system doesn’t include dependencies; it exists in a constant state of prioritisation. As you finish tasks, you assess the pending according to the time and information you have and decide the best task at the time.
The columns can be called pretty much anything according to what you want to achieve. And you could split your doing column, for example, one to store tasks where you’re waiting for more information, or input from another person.
Goals
While you can use kanban for a date based goal system, I’m expecting a disrupted year and don’t want to force any deadlines on myself. The “work” will progress as and when it progress.
So, the only real way I have of knowing how I’m doing will be the percentage of sticky notes in the done column. Always assuming I manage to accurately get the tasks down!
We’ll see how I get on…
| Goals | SCORE | NOTES |
| Rebrand my businesses. | 0 | Haven’t made up the kanban boards yet. |
| Revitalise the websites. | 0 | ditto |
| Consolidate the online stores. | 0 | ditto |
| Finish some of my long-term outstanding items. | 0 | ditto |
That I have chosen not to include goals for staying married, losing weight, and getting Stephen King famous, doesn’t mean they aren’t important to me. It just means that with so much else going on, I probably won’t talk about that much.
So, after feeling rudderless through January 2023, I at least have a plan to be going on with. How did your year start?
You can find more monthly reports on the Life Worth Living page.
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