Using a Kanban Board as a To-Do List
Even after missing my flight home for winter break and spending the entire day (8AM to midnight when I was finally picked up by my parents) in the airport, I was still excited. Mostly to finally escape airports and go back to sleep, but also because I knew I had two weeks ahead of me which I could use to do whatever I wanted as it was my free time. I had just finished my first co-op at BitSight where they use Scrum for project management, so I was very used to and in the groove of using a kanban board to visualize all the tasks currently being worked on. I wanted to continue using such a process as I felt it would help me switch into working mode more easily. I found waffle.io, which creates an online kanban board for you based on the issues on a given GitHub repository and the tags associated with said issue. I created an empty repo to use for my todo list and set off to work.
I found through using a kanban board that I was able to work on multiple things at once much easier since it helped to lower the amount of time spent context switching because all of the necessary information was right there in front of me: what I did last time, what there is to do, what's the status of the things I'm working on.
Over the past few months I have sort of left it hanging and unused, not because I didn't find it helpful, but because I've been very busy with my coursework and haven't had much (if any) time for personal projects. Why didn't I use it for my school work you ask? Simply because I already had a workflow and software setup for doing just that. I use iStudiez Pro to manage and track my coursework and grades. It's really a joy to use and it makes staying on top of the large workload that much more manageable. There are apps for OS X, the iPhone, as well as the iPad, and you're able to sync your data across all devices with ease, making it easier than ever to stay on top of my coursework.
Once the summer starts, I'll have more free time to devote to personal projects so I'm certain I'll be using said online kanban board again to manage and track my progress, the workflow just makes sense to me.