Get Everything Done

I’ve been thinking and applying a simple technique to a whole variety of problems. I’d like to explore it’s limits. it’s Mark’s Backlog method!(http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2009/8/31/backlog-method.html )

1) Isolate the backlog
2) Get the system for handling new stuff sorted
3) Keep working away at the backlog


It’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle. As you know, you don’t start with all the scrambled pieces in the area where the picture is supposed to go. Rather, put the pieces aside so you have room to build the picture. Same goes for anything that’s messy: The easiest way to fix it is to first move it out.

This is a basis of Marie Kondo: You don’t tidy a closet except by pulling everything out first.

Mark has applied it to Tidying, Debt clearing, and Time Management. I find it’s useful in any work project. If ever it feels like it’s a mess and I don’t know where to proceed, I solve the conundrum in 3 steps:

1. Set aside all the confusing project materials including especially scattered tasks. It’s a backlog.
2. Reconstruct the foundation of what the project is currently about. This usually starts with pulling out key items from the backlog.
3. Set a regular task of sifting through the backlog.

This only works in the long run if you are aggressive enough to clear the backlogs before you feel a need to backlog again. If you are piling on piles, the mess is intractable per your current inadequate process of cutting it down.

I’m looking at applying it to legacy software source code. In writing, if you don’t like how a chapter is going, write it anew. You can pull the good bits in from the old much easier than you can try to edit a mess into clarity.

In task management, I set aside my list often (DIT fashion?). Scan the backlog to pull out key tasks. Add a recurring task to clear the backlog over time.

At this point I’m wondering, what CAN’T this work for? It seems to me whatever problem of complexity has a solution, this method helps to solve it.

Christopher, you are absolutely right: Unrealistic expectations of what you can do, necessarily results in having a list that’s too big to handle, and at face there is no solution to the problem.

I had a different perspective in mind. Technically speaking, essential complexity refers to a problem that no matter how you approach it, the problem will remain complex. This doesn’t have to apply here. You have to change the problem from “do everything I want today” into “do what I can today”. And my solution to that problem starts with the backlog. To which I think you already agree, but I will expand nonetheless:

By putting all the [too many] tasks away, you now have a blank slate. Pull out again just the most important ones. Now you have a very manageable agenda to carry out. On that agenda is the task to whittle away at that backlog, and that whittling task must be approached with a pruning mindset: You weren’t able to do all this before, so drop what you can drop, do [or plan] what you must do, until the backlog is cleared and your agenda is tamed.

In this way what was a confusing mess of too much to do is reduced to a manageable list of just enough.

(Now if someone feels an avoidance mechanism is necessary, we need a different category of analysis to address that.)