I know that a visual workplace works to improve productivity. What I did not think about was that it can work for the individual just as well as for the team. During the weekend's browsing I came across this posting about Kanban for One. And, better, the inspiring photograph of Nomad8's office with a kanban board at most desks. Thus inspired, I created my own Kanban board and used it right from the start of the day. And it worked! It was much easier to manage the set of activities over the day. It was delightful seeing the steady accumulation of "done" tasks. It was also surprising how quickly tasks got stuck. (And it is the stuck tasks that tend to get forgotten.) I plan to keep using the system and see how it goes.
The board is a 1'×2' piece of foam core board from a discarded marketing sign, the markings are with white pencil, and the tasks are written on 2"×1.5" Post It notes. It really couldn't be simpler to construct.
Note that I am using the kanban board in conjunction with an existing bug tracking system. The backlog is managed by the bug tracker. The queue needs to be on the kanban board, however.
