The Kanban method: how to apply it to your daily tasks
Three columns and one rule that annoys people: you don't start anything new until you close something. That's ninety per cent of the effect.
Kanban is a visual system for managing work. It was born at Toyota, where a card — kanban literally means "visual card" — signalled when material needed replacing.
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Outside the factory it works on the same logic: put the pending work in plain sight and limit how much you do at once.
And to set it up you need a wall and some sticky notes. Nothing else.
1 · Get all the work into view
A board with three columns: To do · In progress · Done. Each task, one card.
Sounds like nothing. It isn't.
While your tasks live in your head, scattered across email, chat and a notebook, you cannot prioritize. It's impossible, because you never see them all together. That feeling of being swamped nearly always comes from there, not from the real volume of work.
2 · Limit work in progress
This is the rule that genuinely changes things. And it's the one that's hardest to swallow.
Put a maximum on the "In progress" column — three is fine to start — and you don't begin anything new until you close something.
Why is it so hard? Because starting is pleasant and finishing isn't. So anyone's natural tendency is to pile up half-done things and feel extremely busy.
But a task at 80 % contributes exactly what one at 0 % contributes. Nothing.
3 · Pull, don't push
Instead of dealing yourself the day's tasks in the morning, you take them from "To do" as you finish. It's the same pull principle as lean: you produce when there's capacity, not when the plan says so.
| Column | What it holds | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| To do | everything pending, prioritized | ordered by importance |
| In progress | what you're doing now | maximum 3 |
| Done | finished today or this week | empty and review at close |
The bridge to 2026
I bring this into the factory because the work-in-progress limit is, underneath, the same idea as inventory control. And it gets resisted for the same reason.
Piling up started tasks is piling up work in progress. It gives you a sense of productivity while it hides from you that nothing is moving.
The same happens in a plant with initiatives. Nine improvement projects open at once and none closed. I've seen it in big, serious companies.
And I'll tell you I apply this literally to industrial AI projects: one problem, solved and in production, before opening the next.
Not out of caution. Because a finished project gives you trust, data and judgement for the one behind it. And nine half-done ones give you absolutely nothing, except tiredness.