Open your project management tool right now. How many items are in the backlog? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?
Now ask yourself: how many of those will actually get done in the next month? Probably five to ten. The rest will sit there, accumulating guilt and creating the illusion that you're behind.
The Backlog Lie
A backlog is a list of things you've decided not to do — without admitting you've decided not to do them. Every item in there is something that wasn't important enough to do today, or yesterday, or last week, or last month. But because it's still "open," it weighs on you.
This is the lie of backlogs. They pretend everything is still possible. That someday you'll get to item #187. That the feature requested six months ago is still relevant. That nothing has changed since it was written.
Everything has changed. The world moved on. The backlog didn't.
Tickets Should Expire
If a ticket has been sitting in the backlog for six months, it should expire by default. Not hidden. Not quietly ignored. Closed.
If it still matters, someone can reopen it with fresh context. If nobody reopens it, it was never important enough to carry in the first place.
When Everything Is a Priority
A backlog with 200 items and no clear hierarchy is a system with zero priorities. When everything could be important, nothing is. The team can't focus because they can't tell what matters. Every interruption seems legitimate. Every request might be the important one.
This isn't a prioritization problem. It's a courage problem. Someone needs to look at the backlog and say "we're never doing these 150 items. Let's close them."
The Five-Item Plate
What if your entire system could only hold five items per person? No backlog. No "someday" list. Just five things you're doing today. When you finish one, you pick the next most important thing.
That constraint feels terrifying. Where do the other ideas go? What if we forget something important?
Here's the truth: if something is important, it'll come back. If it doesn't come back, it wasn't important. The backlog wasn't protecting you from forgetting — it was preventing you from focusing.
Five items on a plate is a plan. Two hundred tickets in a backlog is a guilt trip.