The Art of Not Seeing Everything
What Chooch the Chipmunk Taught Me About Focus
I'm now 4 weeks into my transcontinental move from the Pacific Northwest to Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains, and I've discovered something (no doubt counterintuitively) about clarity.
While the past couple of months have been about gaining control over all the moving parts of my new life, seeing everything in one place - every task, every challenge, every possibility laid out in my Personal Kanban - I've learned that sometimes the clearest vision comes from seeing not more, but less.
And that lesson came not from a Lean sensei or visual management guru, but from the most unlikely of sources, my new constant companion:
Chooch the Chipmunk. That’s him above.
(Long, admittedly stereotypical backstory cut short: Italian women can’t resist feeding cute beings. He showed up on my back porch, and now every pocket I have contains peanut shell dust. But I digress…)
Now despite having access to a veritable chipmunk buffet (me), Chooch remains remarkably focused, collecting just one peanut at a time, his cheeks full of exactly what matters at this moment. Because of this, he's become my unlikely guide in the art of selective attention, teaching me something profound about my kanban practice that cognitive scientists have long understood: our working memory, like Chooche’s cheeks, have a limited capacity.
When I first arrived here, my kanban board mirrored the enormity of my life's transition. Every task was visible, every challenge stared back at me. And I have to admit, it was overwhelming. But as Dr. Sophie Leroy's research on “attention residue” shows, seeing tasks we can't currently act on creates a cognitive tax of sort, draining mental energy as our brains continue to process them in the background. And so the collapsible container system in my Kanban Zone board quickly became my sanctuary of focus, letting me temporarily mute the background noise while bringing just one aspect of my transition into sharp focus at a time.
Much like blinders on a race horse restricting their peripheral vision, collapsing the containers in my Kanban Zone kanban helps me focus on just what I need to do now…and not get spooked by the paths around me.
Make no mistake - this is not about deluding myself about the complexity of all the work I still have ahead of me. Rather, it's about optimizing my brain’s natural filtering process, and discovering a tool that works with my brain’s needs. Much in the way Chooch knows to focus on one peanut at a time despite the abundance awaiting him in his tray (Yes. I know.) sometimes there really is value in appreciating how less really does yield more.
So while I still can’t find my coffee maker amidst the hundreds of boxes around me, I did find an unexpected truth: Clarity isn't always about seeing everything at once.
Sometimes it's about giving yourself permission to just see enough.
Personal Kanban Class | Modus Institute | The Personal Kanban Book
There are two simultaneous goals we cover with visualization.
1. Focus. The task at hand and the next one. And maybe, just maybe, one more. That's it.
2. Big picture. The overarching view of the whole endeavor in its current state.
Historically, visual boards came mostly as a response to [2]. Before that, we had task lists, which we filtered only to "my tasks" and wouldn't give a flying damn about what was on anybody else's desk.
Enters kanban board, and the only thing we have is the whole thing, so whenever we look at *our* stuff, we look at *everyone else's* too.
A side note: that's why I always had a rule of thumb of having a max of two-digit number of items (any items) on the board. Beyond that, it's just a colorful mess. A side note to side note: with big control boards (obeya anyone?) I'd suggest a higher limit as we rarely focus on the whole thing, and rather on sections of it.
But then, we could instantly refocus on our own stuff because the board was physical. Zooming in and out with the physical visualization is just... natural. We don't even consciously think about doing that.
It's not so with digital tools. Screen estate is a limiting factor. There's no way to see the whole board on one screen. Zooming in and out require conscious effort (scrolling). So we go back to filters to regain lost focus.
But isn't it a step back into the old-school filtered task lists, which were a problem in the first place?
Great point and post, although I'm now really distracted by the fact you can't find your coffee maker.