5 Ways To Accelerate Your Career Progression With Kanban

Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut at your job? Are you not seeing the progression that you want in your career? Are you looking for tools and tips that can help you advance your career? If so, personal Kanban may be the solution for you.

Personal Kanban is a productivity system that can help you achieve your goals, and get ahead in your career. In this blog post, we will discuss 5 ways to use personal Kanban to accelerate your career progression. Let’s get started!

Why is Kanban relevant to my career?

It’s true that Kanban techniques are typically associated with project management and product development workflows to help teams work together better, but they can be extremely helpful beyond just your day to day work. In fact, personal Kanban can be a powerful tool to help you achieve your career goals. Here are 5 ways that personal Kanban can help you accelerate your career progression:

1) Focus on the most important tasks

When you use Kanban to manage your work, you create a visual representation of all of the tasks that you need to complete. This allows you to see at a glance which tasks are most important and need to be completed first.

This benefit applies in exactly the same way when you create a Kanban board filled with tasks that are related to your development. Brainstorming and creating development tasks, and then organizing them in a Kanban board, can help you to focus your attention on the items that will have the biggest impact on your career, and ensure that you are always making progress towards your goals.

Most people don’t approach their career development with the same rigour as their day to day work, and as a result, they can end up feeling stuck or lost. The absence of a structured approach can make it difficult to identify the tasks that will move you closer to your long-term goals. People often leap from one idea to the next, grasping at whatever job listing or recommendation is in front of them.

Creating a personal Kanban board can help to change that by giving you a framework for thinking about and planning your career development. Choosing the right path and working towards it in a methodical pattern is far more productive.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are some ideas for development tasks that you can add to your Kanban board:

• Research companies or industries that you’re interested in
• Attend networking events related to your field
• Identify mentors and role models
• Create a portfolio of your work
• Write articles or blog posts related to your area of expertise
• Speak at industry events or conferences

As you can see, there are a variety of tasks that you can add to your Kanban board, depending on your goals and interests. You can use existing templates such as a continuous learning plan and adapt it to your own needs, or you can build your own board from scratch. The important thing is that you identify the tasks that are most relevant to your career development, and make sure that you are always making progress on them.

2) Keep organized and efficient

Another benefit of using Kanban is that it helps you to stay organized and efficient in your work. This is because Kanban provides a framework for you to track your progress on tasks, and identify any bottlenecks in your workflow. This can help you to eliminate wasted time and effort, and make the most of the time you have to spare for your personal development.

Very few people set aside time every week specifically for working only on their personal development. It’s a big missed opportunity- if you want to make progress in your career, you need to be proactive and dedicate some time specifically to working on your development.

But even if you do have the time available, it can be difficult to know how best to use it. Should you be networking? Researching companies? Working on your resume? The possibilities are endless, and it can be tough to identify which activities will be the most productive.

This is where Kanban can help. By breaking down your development tasks into smaller steps, and then tracking your progress on a Kanban board, you can ensure that you are always making efficient use of your time.

For example, let’s say that you want to spend two hours every week working on your development. You can use Kanban to break this down into smaller tasks, and then track your progress on a weekly basis.

Kanban can also help you to identify any bottlenecks in your workflow. For example, if you find that you are spending a lot of time on research but not making much progress on other tasks, you can adjust your workflow accordingly. It’s easy to spot with the visual aid.

3) Gain clarity on your next steps

When you use Kanban to map out your development tasks, it can also provide clarity on your next steps. This is because Kanban helps you to break down tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces. This can help you to see the path ahead more clearly, and make sure that you are always making progress.

Prioritization is important to all work, and also to your development. Most people have more options and tasks on their to do list than they can complete in a day, week or even month. This is where Kanban can really help you to focus on the most important tasks, and spot where to focus next.

For example, let’s say that you want to research different companies that you’re interested in working for. This is a big task, and it can be difficult to know where to start. However, if you break it down into smaller steps – such as researching one company per day – it becomes much more manageable.

You can go a step further and track the quantity of a certain task. Volume or frequency tracking means you can spot when you are focusing too much on a certain step in your plan. Perhaps you already have loads of companies you’ve collected for your list but you haven’t spent enough time analyzing each in depth. With tracking you’ll pick up on this quickly. Monitoring your activity will make it easy to make decisions on how to spend your time.

4) Set and track your goals

Another benefit of personal Kanban is that it can help you to set and track your goals. This is because Kanban provides a visual representation of your progress, which can help you to see how far you’ve come and what still needs to be done. Additionally, Kanban can help you to identify any roadblocks that are preventing you from achieving your goals, and help you to find a way around them.

Simply the act of writing something down can help. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t habitually take notes, the simple process of setting up a Kanban board with your goals can be really helpful. You’ll have to think about what you want to achieve, and this in turn will help you to focus on achieving it.

But it’s not just about writing things down- it’s about taking action too. Once you’ve identified your goal, you can use Kanban to break it down into smaller steps and then track your progress. This will help you to stay focused and on track, and ensure that you are making steady progress towards your goal.

5) Gain a sense of accomplishment

Finally, personal Kanban can give you a great sense of accomplishment. This is because when you use Kanban to track your progress, you can see the tangible results of your hard work. This can motivate you to keep going, and help you to see the value in what you are doing.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day grind and lose sight of your long-term goals. However, when you use Kanban to track your progress, you can see how far you’ve come and what still needs to be done. This can help you to stay focused and motivated, and ensure that you are making steady progress towards your goals.

There is also a strong psychological benefit to being able to tick things off a to do list. Each time you complete a task, you get a small sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. This can help to keep you motivated and inspired, and can even help to improve your productivity.

So there you have it — five ways that personal Kanban can help to accelerate your career progression. If you’re looking for a way to get ahead, then Kanban might just be the answer. Give it a try and see for yourself!