Personal Kanban: Columns, WIP Limits and 3 Example Boards

Personal kanban is a simple way to manage your own work on a board: each task is a card, and cards move left to right through columns such as Backlog, To-Do, In Progress, Review and Done. It rests on two rules: make all your work visible, and limit how much of it is in progress at once. The limit does the heavy lifting, because a full In Progress column tells you to finish something before you start anything new.

Below you will find how to design the columns, how to set a WIP limit you will actually keep, three example boards, and when a spreadsheet board is all you need.

What a Personal Kanban Board Is

Kanban comes from car manufacturing at Toyota, where a card (the Japanese word means roughly “signboard”) told the station upstream to make more parts only when they were needed. Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry adapted the idea for individuals in their book Personal Kanban. The core stays the same: work is pulled forward when there is room for it, not pushed in whenever it arrives.

A board has three parts:

• Cards. One card is one piece of work you can finish, such as “draft the brochure copy”, not “brochure”.
• Columns. Each column is a stage, and a card sits in exactly one of them at a time.
• Limits. A maximum number of cards allowed in a column, most often In Progress.

The board replaces the question “what should I do next?” with a glance. If In Progress is full, the answer is to finish or unblock one of the cards already there.

Kanban Columns: How to Design Your Board

Start with five columns and change them only when your real work tells you to.

Column	What goes here	A card moves on when
Backlog	Every idea, request and someday task	You pick it at your weekly review
To-Do	Work you have committed to this week	You have room under your WIP limit
In Progress	Work you are actively doing	Your part is finished
Review	Work waiting on approval, feedback or someone else	It is approved, or it comes back to In Progress
Done	Finished work	You clear the column at the weekly review

Three design choices matter more than the column names.

Keep To-Do short. The backlog can be as long as you like, but To-Do should hold only what you can realistically finish this week. A To-Do column with 25 cards is a second backlog.

Give waiting its own column. Much personal work stalls on other people: a client’s approval, a quote, a signature. Putting those cards in Review (or “Waiting on”) keeps them visible without clogging In Progress.

Flag blocked work instead of moving it. A blocked card is still in progress; you just cannot move it forward. Mark it with a color or a “blocked” note that says what would unblock it. A separate Blocked column tends to become a parking lot nobody visits.

Split any card that will take more than a few days. “Website” never moves; “write the home page copy” moves by Thursday. Our work breakdown structure example shows how to cut a project into card-sized tasks.

WIP Limits: How Many Cards in Progress

A WIP (work in progress) limit is the maximum number of cards allowed in a column at once. For one person, two or three cards in progress is a sensible start: one main task, one to switch to while you wait on something, and perhaps one small admin card.

The reason it works is arithmetic. On average, the time a card takes from start to finish equals the number of cards in progress divided by the number you finish per week (a rule known as Little’s Law). Say you finish 3 cards a week:

Cards in progress	Cards finished per week	Average time from start to done
9	3	3 weeks
6	3	2 weeks
3	3	1 week

You do the same amount of work in every row. With three cards in progress, though, each one is finished in a week instead of three, so clients get answers sooner and fewer half-done tasks sit in your head.

To set your limit:

1. Count the cards you have in progress right now, honestly, including the ones you started and paused.
2. Set the limit a little below that count, or at three if you have no idea.
3. When the column is full, do one of three things: finish a card, unblock one, or move one back to To-Do.
4. After two weeks, adjust. If you often sit idle waiting on others, raise the limit by one. If cards keep stalling, lower it.

Put a limit on Review too if you work with clients. Four cards waiting on approvals means four people to chase, and a limit there prompts you to follow up before you start more.

Kanban Board Examples

Freelance designer (In Progress limit 3, Review limit 4)

Column	Cards
Backlog	Refresh portfolio site; pitch two local agencies; build a quote template
To-Do	Bakery menu redesign; hotel rebrand proposal; clinic social media templates
In Progress	Law firm brochure layout; bakery logo concepts
Review	Yoga studio flyer (client approval); accountant letterhead (printer proof)
Done	Wedding invitation suite; coffee shop loyalty card

Two cards in progress leaves room for a third, but both Review cards need a nudge first. Chasing the flyer approval takes five minutes and may free the next invoice, so it beats opening a new file.

Household (In Progress limit 2 per adult)

Column	Cards
Someday (Backlog)	Clear out the garage; repaint the bathroom; compare car insurance quotes
This week (To-Do)	Book dental checkups; renew a passport; return library books
Doing (In Progress)	Plan the summer trip (Alex); sort outgrown kids’ clothes (Jordan)
Waiting on (Review)	Plumber’s quote for the kitchen sink; refund for returned shoes
Done	Smoke alarm batteries replaced; school supplies ordered

Home boards work better with friendly column names. The Waiting on column earns its place here: a refund or a quote is easy to forget once you have made the call.

Small team (In Progress limit 2 per person, Review limit 3)

Column	Cards (owner)
Backlog	Customer survey; webinar series idea; refresh the About page
To-Do	November newsletter (Ana); client case study (Ben); holiday social calendar (Chloe)
In Progress	Launch landing page (Dev); launch email sequence (Ana); trade show graphics (Chloe); pricing blog post (Ben)
Review	Launch press release (with the director); ad copy (legal check)
Done	October newsletter; sales one-pager

On a team, the limit is per person and cards are pulled, not assigned. When Ben finishes the blog post, he takes the next card from To-Do instead of waiting to be handed one. In a short daily check-in, walk the board from right to left, starting with Review, so the talk starts with the work closest to done.

Running Your Personal Kanban Each Week

A board only helps if it matches reality. Two habits keep it honest:

• Move the card before you start. Starting something means moving its card first. If that would break the limit, you have your answer.
• Hold a 15-minute weekly review. Clear Done, chase every Review card, then pull next week’s cards from the backlog into To-Do. Choose them with a method from how to prioritize tasks rather than taking whatever sits on top.

Keep routine chores such as the weekly report or monthly bills off the board. They never move through stages; they simply repeat, so a dated schedule suits them better, as explained in how to manage recurring tasks.

When a Spreadsheet Board Is Enough

A spreadsheet board does the job when:

• you work alone or in a small team that already shares a Google Sheets file;
• you want the board to sit next to dates, owners, a Gantt chart or project costs, all from one task list;
• you are happy to move a card by changing a dropdown instead of dragging it.

It falls short when several people update cards from their phones all day, or when you need comments, file attachments, notifications or automations on each card. Our comparison of project management spreadsheets and software walks through that decision.

The Kanban board template in our project management spreadsheet uses the same five columns: Backlog, To-Do, In Progress, Review and Done. Each task in the task list has a Kanban category dropdown; change it and the card moves, and filters narrow the board to one person, one priority or a date range. There is no drag and drop. The template page also shows the FILTER formula if you would rather build a board yourself.

Before you set anything up, try a paper version for one week: five columns on a sheet of paper, sticky notes, and a limit of three in progress. Those five working days will tell you more about your real limit than any setup screen.