In the book by Margulan Seisembay, I came across an interesting concept. Margulan has his own system of flow-based planning, built around offloading the mind and then organizing everything on Kanban boards. At first, I didn’t quite understand how he suggests breaking down the initial entities during decomposition — it seemed like the context would be lost.
But then he explains the idea of separating Kanban boards into control boards and execution boards. Execution boards are for specific tasks, while control boards are for higher-level elements used to track the overall situation. For example, a board with monthly goals would be considered a control tool.
In my own practice, I don’t use Kanban boards for everything — just for specific areas. But I really liked the idea of separating control and execution. When you read about it, it sounds like an obvious cliché. But I think people always confuse the two. It takes deliberate effort not to mix them up. Why is it so important to keep them separate? So you don’t mess up your monkey’s life (see Jedi Techniques)! If the monkey doesn’t clearly understand what needs to be done right now, it will instantly get sucked into memes.
In my system, as a true adherent of the Jedi Techniques, I use a single TODO list — nothing better has been invented. And for control, I use a Kanban board with plans, along with a paper notebook.