Focused Weekly Planning: More Improvements, More Tasks Accomplished

You might have noticed a card in my To Do that’s been there since the beginning: “Find and Buy New House”. I have been looking for “my cabin in Canada” for a while, and I think I found the house of my dreams, so I asked my realtor to do a virtual visit. This week, I will explain how I handled this unplanned work and share some new improvements in my Weekly Plan card.

After the virtual visit, I immediately put an offer on the house with a conditional clause that I had to see the house once before closing. This is when my card “Find and Buy New House” exploded with all the information I needed neatly organized on this one card. 

Card Description and Attachments

First, I put everything I could find about the house in the description field of the card. These were mostly links to listings and videos I found about the house. I also created a Google Drive folder to store all the official documents and included the link to that folder in the description. We often do that on our cards when we know we will be sharing many documents that will require collaboration directly in the documents.

Having cloud storage to share files is great because I didn’t want to invite my realtor to see my Kanban board, but I needed to collaborate with him on various documents.

Above is a screenshot of the setting in Kanban Zone that controls which attachments are available on cards. I always tell clients to keep secret/private information in their cloud storage and only link or attach these files to cards in Kanban Zone. This prevents file duplication and saves time by having only one version of a file.

Checklists and Tasks

To avoid forgetting anything, I created multiple checklists on the card. I wanted to track the offer process, take measurements inside the house, and track all my questions. I also needed to figure out a way to pay for the house, so I had multiple tasks to do, such as talking to my banks in Canada and the United States.

As the screenshot above shows, you can create a mini-project plan by having multiple checklists and track any tasks you want within these checklists. 

For me, the most important thing was to have everything about the house on one card. Another aspect I love about Kanban is that it reduces reliance on emails, meetings, and unnecessary back-and-forths about the work. Everything about the work should be easily accessible on the card. 

NOTE: Since I didn’t invite others to collaborate on this board, I don’t get to leverage comments in the cards. When collaborating as a team on a Kanban board, we completely stop using emails to communicate because the comments on the card permit us to have conversations about the work directly on the card. The eliminates excuses about missing someone on an email or not having seen an email.

Weekly Card Improvements

In last week’s blog, I mentioned still figuring out how to best manage my weekly cards and waiting another week to lock down the approach so I could save the next one as a card template. Well, I think I have a good plan now…

In the screenshot above, I show what a card template looks like in Kanban Zone. It’s almost the same as a card, but only the fields that make sense for saving as part of a template are included.

1. Description: I love starting every week by answering the question, “What is the most important thing I can do this week?” This question helps me set a clear direction for the week and ensures I at least get that one thing done.
2. Tasks – Having overcommitted in previous weeks, I’m now focused on maintaining one task per role in my life (father, son/brother, business owner, lover) along with placeholder checklists for weekly realistic tasks. I continue to use the Big Rock concept to safeguard a few essential tasks each week from the flood of time demands and unexpected events.
3. Recurrence – This section allows you to create a card template on a specified schedule. For me, this means every Sunday at 9 AM. This is an optional feature, as you may prefer to create card templates solely to streamline the process of adding new cards.
4. Dates – Since the weekly cards are meant to start on Sunday and end the following Sunday, I am entering the numbers 0 and 7 to create relative start and end dates at the time of creation of these cards.

I could have included other options on a card template, such as linking to other cards, having attachments, and leveraging custom fields, but I don’t need these yet.

I am now set to have a standard way to capture my weekly goal, develop healthy habits, and get the most important work done every week. 

Recap for Week #3

Thanks to focused planning, I could book a flight, visit the house, get an inspector, and close the offer all in a week. It left me time to spend with my parents and see a few friends, which knocked out a few role tasks and social/emotional tasks. This was an intense week, but as soon as my goal of buying a house became my focus, all my energy was spent accordingly. I didn’t negate my other commitments, but my priorities were clear.

I love that my weekly card shows up on Sunday morning. Now, it’s time to plan for next week!

Stay tuned for the next blog in this series, which will be linked here once it’s live.