Two Columns, One Focus: The tiny Kanban change that stopped my list paralysis
How removing the 'To‑Do' column and keeping only 'Now' and 'Later' rescued my focus, reduced context switches, and survived Bengaluru evenings and flaky home internet.
Written by: Rohan Deshpande
It was 8:10 a.m. and my Trello board looked exactly like my brain: a thousand sticky tasks crammed into a “To‑Do” column, a handful of scattered “In Progress” cards, and a creeping sense that I had to be many people at once. I had just finished a 30‑minute standup where three new tickets landed on my plate. My inbox pinged. My manager DM’d. My home Wi‑Fi dropped mid‑fetch (Bengaluru apartment life). I opened the “To‑Do” column and froze.
I’d tried all the usual fixes: time‑blocking, Pomodoro, ruthlessly unsubscribing from newsletters. None of it stuck because the real problem wasn’t time or willpower. It was choice. Every morning I had to pick from a long, unprioritised list and that decision itself ate the morning. I needed to make choosing trivial.
So I removed the “To‑Do” column.
The rule I actually used
I converted every personal board I touch — Trello for side projects, GitHub Projects for work tracking, even the physical sticky notes on my desk — into exactly two columns: Now and Later.
- Now holds 1–2 items max. These are the only things I commit to that day.
- Later is the backlog. Everything else lives here — ideas, tickets, someday tasks, recurring chores.
No “In Progress”. No “Blocked”. No “Review”. No triage column. Just two piles and one rule: unless a card is in Now, I don’t touch it unless a fire blows up and I must.
How I make it work (practical bits, not the rah‑rah)
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The morning ritual is decisive and short. I spend 6–10 minutes after tea scanning Later and selecting what goes into Now. If an item will take more than half a day I either break it into a smaller chunk or move it to a calendar slot. I used to agonise for 30–45 minutes trying to pick the “perfect” task. The 6–10 minute cap forced choices.
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I keep the Now limit strict. If my phone buzzes with a “can you do this?” Slack, I either say no, move it to Later, or swap it with an existing Now item — with explicit permission. People actually respond better to a concrete “I can swap this for X” than to vague “I’ll try”.
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Timeboxing + finishing rule. I aim to finish the Now items before switching. If I can’t, I break the remaining work into a smaller next‑day Now card. This reduced my habit of half‑finishing ten things.
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Tools are dumb. I use Trello and a tiny Notion page for the Later list. The point isn’t tooling; it’s the two‑column discipline. If you prefer sticky notes, use those. If you need an audit trail in JIRA, have Later be a single epic.
What actually changed
- Context switches dropped. With one or two targets, I stopped jumping between unrelated tickets because there was nothing to “peek” at. The day gained a shape.
- Small wins stacked. Completing Now felt real. Progress begets progress; two wins meant afternoons were easier.
- Evenings reappeared. I stopped carrying undone “To‑Dos” in my head to 10 p.m. and that made dinner and sleep better. For me, that’s not fluff — it’s reclaiming 2–3 hours a week.
The honest failure and the tradeoffs
This isn’t for everyone. My first month was messy.
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Collaboration friction: My team had an expectation that “In Progress” existed so reviewers knew when to look. Removing intermediate columns made cross‑team visibility worse. We solved it by tagging Now cards with the PR number and using a short Slack status during reviews. It worked, but it added an extra convention we had to teach.
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Missed deadlines once. Because I offloaded time‑sensitive items to my calendar and not to Now, I missed a quarterly GST reminder the first month. Why? I treated “pay GST” like any other backlog item. That was a hard lesson: time‑bound administrative tasks need calendar anchors, not Kanban cards. After that I split myself: Later = ideas and work backlog; Calendar = bills, taxes, and fixed dates.
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It favors small, discrete work. If your role involves long architectural work that naturally sits in phases, the two‑column model can feel artificial. I learned to add a separate “Big Bets” doc for those multi‑week things and then create daily Now tasks that move the bet forward.
Why this matters in India (and why I mention flaky Wi‑Fi and salary days)
We have handshake cultures, last‑minute asks, and sometimes the internet behaves like it’s on a lunch break. That environment amplifies half‑finished work. The two‑column rule doesn’t stop interruptions; it forces an explicit swap. If an urgent client payment (I once had to chase a ₹45,000 refund) shows up, I don’t silently start it — I declare a swap. That small social cost prevents the momentum loss which, in my experience, costs more than any single interruption.
Also, when home internet hiccups mean an 8 a.m. CI check takes ages, I don’t keep opening other cards while waiting. I keep working on the single Now item that doesn’t need CI. The system meshes with low‑reliability environments.
Note on scaling: I run Now/Later for personal work and for my immediate project board. For company‑wide tracking we still use a richer workflow. The two‑column approach is a cognitive hygiene practice, not a software‑engineering manifesto.
If you try it
Pick a day when you’re not in the middle of a large release. Convert a personal board to Now/Later. Limit Now to one item if you’re feeling brave, two if you’re not. Do a 6–10 minute morning choose, commit to finishing or breaking the card, and report back in a week.
My takeaway — short and useful
Choice is a tax. Take away the tax by shrinking the menu. The two‑column rule didn’t make me magically more disciplined; it made discipline cheap. One small rule. One short ritual. A lot fewer evenings ruined by unfinished todos.