When someone comes up with an idea: we best not forget that.
We make a ticket, with great intentions of coming back to it. We’ll add it to the list to be done tomorrow - or the next day.
This isn’t just true of products, but reading lists, plans, and more.
My reading list is growing. There is always more to consume.
My Trello board is filled with general links that I’ll check out soon.
My article list is 32 items longs. 32 things I want to write about at some point. Where do I start? 200 words a day. You can chip away at ideas.
The product I work on in my career must be close to 20,000 tickets all in. Unclear tickets that were raised 5 years ago. When it finally comes time to look at them, all traces of knowledge or value will be lost in history. If this list of age old tickets were to vanish into thin air, we would actually save time in the long run. Anything important would be raised again and again until we heard it so much that we would have to prioritise it.
To be blunt, my experience with backlogs is that they are an ever growing lists things that will never come. Small cards or tickets of what might be, but never will be. A list of missed opportunities. A list of guilt. Simultaneously, a list of nothing. The backlog is a scrapyard. A pile of disregarded ideas.
With the new year coming, I vow to hold onto my personal lists until January - and I’ll try to work through it too. On New Year’s Day, I will destroy every trace of my personal backlog and start a fresh. I have full confidence that anything important will be raised again.
Maybe I’ve spent too much time listening to the guys at Basecamp…