Blast Through Your Midlife To-Do List With This Simple And Effective Productivity Tool

Are you ready to increase midlife productivity and start seeing progress on those little tasks at the bottom of your to-do list that never get done? For me, these little stragglers get ignored week after week. If I don't move "wash the car" to my priority list, it'll never happen.

The midlife hack I've been using to increase my productivity is called a Kanban board. There are a lot of different ways to use this tool, but I keep mine quite simple.

My board has three columns: the first column is titled To Do; the second column is In Progress; and the third column is Done. The goal of a Kanban board is to move a project from the To Do column on the left to the Done column on the right.

I view it as when your team is at bat In baseball:

• The To Do column is the On Deck circle where the batter warms up. These are the tasks that are waiting. You haven't started them yet.
• The In Progress column is when you're at bat and you're actually doing the work.
• The Done column is when you're cruising past home plate after hitting a home run. The work is completed. (That's my favorite column!)

I recently ordered a whiteboard to act as my Kanban board and I'm loving it so much. I've used a digital Kanban board for many years, but sometimes just getting things out of the digital world — getting out of my head, off the screens and actually touching things — makes such a difference. I love touching the pages of a book when I'm reading. I love writing with a pen and paper.

If you're struggling with the to-do list that's on your phone or on any of your devices, I would encourage you to give the physical Kanban board a shot.

What's needed to create a physical Kanban board?

You need three things: 1) a whiteboard, a poster board or anything where you can draw columns; 2) yellow stickies; and 3) something to write with. That's pretty much it. Create three columns: To Do, In Progress and Done. Write each task on an individual sticky and put it into the To Do column. Move the sticky to In Progress when you start to work on it, and to Done when it's completed. That's all there is to it.

If you're managing personal and professional tasks, use different color pens or different color stickies for each. I get 250 yellow stickies for $1.25 at Dollar Tree. I like keeping things simple and on some level, I'm cheap. I don't want to spend a ton of money on something I'm going to be throwing away. So that's the way you use the physical Kanban board.

What's needed to create a digital Kanban board?

If you want to do this digitally, I would highly recommend Trello because a free account gives you 10 boards to use for work, home, projects, etc. I use Trello for these podcast episodes, but I have more columns because there are so many steps to creating an episode. Let's break it down a bit.

My first column is Ideas. I can capture any idea on my laptop or on my phone when I'm out. I like knowing the idea lives somewhere safe besides my brain. ;)

The second column is called Script, Title and Show Notes, and this is the writing portion for the episode. I batch these together so I don't do a lot of context switching (a.k.a multitasking). Once my brain is in the writing mode, I want to keep it there and get all the similar tasks done at once.

My third column is Recording and Editing, which I finalize by creating an mp3 and uploading it to my podcast hosting service. I also have a Canva column to create images for promoting the episode, then I have a few other columns to take the episode to completion. 

Two things to consider when creating your Kanban board

Here are a couple of things to consider whether you're doing a physical or digital Kanban board:

1. Break each task into the appropriate steps. Doing this keeps you from going into overwhelm, which is what we all have a tendency to do when we have a big project.

If you're cleaning the garage, your yellow stickies may look like this:

• Move everything out of the garage.
• Sweep and blow the leaves out.
• Clean off dust and cobwebs.
• Sort through each box to figure out what stays, what's donated and what's trashed.
• Consolidate boxes.
• Put everything back into the garage.

I have a little one car garage with no shelves so it takes me a whopping 15 to 20 minutes to move everything out. I also declutter regularly, so I don't have a lot of stuff to look through. My yellow sticky simply said, "Clean garage" because I knew it was going to take me less than an hour and a half to get this done. It wasn't a very long process.

But if you have a double garage with shelves that are stuffed to the gills and you haven't cleaned it in a while, you're going to have more steps on individual stickies because it's going to be a longer process for you.

Doing this will help you see some progress as you move the sticky from To Do to In Progress to Done, and it will keep you out of overwhelm when you're working on bigger projects.

2. Keep a notebook of upcoming tasks that you can add to the board as space allows. This will keep the board clutter-free and make it easier to see all the tasks in each column. You'll stay more focused if the stickies are organized .

Kanban boards are a great way to track your midlife tasks and help you see progress on your to-do list. Using a Kanban board is one of the simplest, easiest ways to ramp up your productvity, whether you need a straightforward to-do list or you're working on bigger projects.

Grab your free copy of How To Reclaim Your Energy And Kick Midlife Blues To The Curb: A Simple Guide

Join other Easy Agers in the Facebook community