The Infinite Backlog

I keep a running list of things I want to build or fix. I add to it several times a day now, not because more is broken than a year ago, but because I finally notice it.

For most of my career, small friction went nowhere. A report I formatted by hand every week, a folder I searched the same way every time, a screen I clicked through the same four steps to reach. None of that became a todo, because fixing it would have cost more than living with it. The math never worked, so I stopped even doing the math. I filtered it out before I noticed I was filtering.

That filter is gone now. Not because the friction got worse. Because the cost of fixing it dropped far enough that almost everything clears the bar. So the parts of my day I used to walk past without a second thought now register as a line item. Add one more to the list.

This is a different effect than the one behind the learning snowball. That post was about each new build costing less than the one before it, because of the learnings that get carried over. This one is about noticing more to build in the first place, whether or not I ever get to it. The first is about the cost of building. This one is about the size of what counts as worth building.

Some days the list grows by four or five things before lunch. I used to read a long todo list as a sign I was falling behind. I have started reading mine differently. It is not a measure of how much is broken. It is a measure of how much I am now willing to look at.

I do not have a tidy answer for what to do with a list that grows faster than any one person could clear it. I am not sure there is one yet, or that there needs to be. For now I am just noticing that the list itself is the evidence. A year ago, most of what is on it today would never have made the page.

Be Better - Write it down anyway.