We have backlogs to tell us what to work on next. Things that don’t fit in the current sprint, or things we want to work on but are blocked because there are things we don’t know.
Backlogs can also be graveyards, where we hold on to dead ideas because they seemed like a good idea, or we don’t want to disappoint someone, or we’d love to try that new library that came out 5 years ago. Where we want to remember the low-priority things that nag us.
Warren Buffett has an idea that if you write down the next 20 things you want to do, and then highlight the 3 most important, the rest of the list becomes “do not do under any circumstances until those 3 are done” because they become anchors that drag you mentally, that hold space rent-free because they’ve not been done.
Create a won’t-do list, a rejected list, a Pandora’s box, and a someday-maybe list, and throw all those things in there. They’re still safe, you’ll see them again if you want to, but you don’t have to think about them. Put reasons against them if you want; this isn’t a priority because X is more important, or because we don’t know whether A, B, or C will lead the market. We’re not touching things with a bargepole because the ethics team doesn’t trust them; so let’s never add this and tell everyone why.
Put them out of sight and out of mind, and give the ideas you want to work on the space they deserve.
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