Don’t be WIPed

Do you struggle with having more projects than you can productively work on simulatenously? I certainly do. That's why I have been attracted to the Personal Kanban productivity system, which puts a lot of emphasis on visualizing, pruning, and limiting one's "Work in Progress" (WIP). I've not been sufficiently serious about setting realistic limits on my WIP: witness my overflowing list of projects started but essentially zombified. How many projects survive on my list when I have neither the energy to advance them nor the will to kill them?

Face it: I'm not going to cure my deep rooted habit of being WIPed overnight. Yesterday, I took tiny steps in the right direction by forcing myself to schedule dedicated times for the next steps for some of my projects. Theoretically, a rigorously maintained and enforced calendar is a good visualization of WIP and of incipient (rampant?) overcommitment. There's probably something to learn from articles like How To: Setting Your Personal WIP Limit | Personal Kanban. The start of the article is to the point:

There are only two rules in Personal Kanban.

Visualize Your Work

and

Limit Your Work in Progress

But I need to find the time to read the rest of the article first!