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Read more →Why a kanban board is your secret weapon in school
A surprisingly flexible system that can pack a punch, once you stop trying to hold your whole semester in your head.
Annie
RDH and creator of the nook & notes
I still remember staring at my planner during my first semester of dental hygiene school. It was just a massive wall of text that made my eyes roll to the back of my head. Too many things to keep track of, and a regular to-do list just wasn't going to cut it anymore.
You are juggling an impossible amount of assignments, quizzes, exams, you name it. It feels like every time you cross one thing off, three more pop up, and that Canvas calendar magically appears full once again and you are ready to pull your hair out. Enter the kanban board.
Visualizing your workload
A kanban board is a visual task management system. You have a designated space for things you need to do, things you are actively doing, and things you have finished. It is a massive upgrade on how you go about completing tasks and how you see the overall picture of what needs to get done.
The magic of limiting your active tasks
I used to be very proud of being a multitasker. That is, until I realized how much precious time I was wasting in dental hygiene school by constantly jumping from one assignment to the next. I get distracted easily, and keeping my focus locked in felt like a battle.
The problem was I would forget where I left of on the other assignment and I wasted time figuring it out, opening google tabs again, opening the books again. So I said no more! I started writing down little steps for each assignment until it got done. This saved me so much time.
You are ideally only allowed to have one task in your active column at any given time.
The secret to kanban methodology is something called a Work in Progress, or WIP, limit. Limiting your active work forces you to focus entirely on finishing one specific task before starting another. This might be hard in hygiene school, but the kanban board is still very useful.
Setting up your board
Here is exactly how to set up a three-column system.
To DoList out your specific tasks.
In ProgressBreak down your active tasks into smaller checklists.
CompletedMove finished items here and let yourself feel the satisfaction of crossing things off.
Pro tip
Divide a big topic such as the nervous system into chunks. This way you know what needs to get done, what you are currently studying, and what you have already mastered, so you don't waste more time on that.
Here are 2 ways of using the kanban board
The beauty of this system is that you can make it work however you want, as long as it is actually helping you out.
Chunking a big task into smaller ones, so nothing feels like one huge assignment.
A catch-all for everything on your plate.
See if this workflow helps you
If you want to try this out for yourself, grab a free sample of the hourly and kanban board layout below. Just import the page directly into GoodNotes, Noteful, or Notability, and see if a visual layout helps your workflow at all.
free sample, no purchase needed
Try the kanban layout for free
This is the exact chunking-style layout from the post, ready to drop into your notes app.
Grab the free sample
