Whenever anyone starts with a new GTD tool, invariably, if they’ve seen a Kanban tool like Trello or ClickUp they get the idea it’s not complete without Kanban boards.
I esteem the Kanban philosophy. I bought two books and read countless posts to learn about WIP limits and at-a-glace visual overheads. It’s got a lot going for it, but the swim lane aspect is the least of it.
Take out-of-the-box Logseq. It’s got custom queries, which we can arrange as desired on our Journal pages. What you do is define queries around task statuses and/or conditions. These represent your swim lanes. Has it dawned on you what this means? Just as Dorothy realized she had the power to go home all along, you’ve also always had all you needed to do Kanban in Logseq.
Yes, query results are arranged vertically instead of horizontally. I hope that’s a pivot your mind can make because, if it can, whenever you appropriately bump the state of your tasks they’re relocated to the right swim lane. Provided you’re being reasonable with your WIP limits, you can still see everything important on one screen. And, if your lists are overloaded, that’s nothing horizontal swim lanes would’ve overcome either.
Swim lanes are overrated. Enjoy Kanban, but it should have more to do with process than horizontal vs. vertical. Since all of Logseq is vertically oriented you might as well be consistent and go with the flow.
I’ve been doing Kanban in Logseq practically since the beginning. All you have to do is define the right queries.