A backlog is a graveyard of intentions dressed up as a plan. Every item in it is a debt you think you will repay but never will.

We put off work. We prioritized, overestimated, and underestimated. We made excuses and delayed decisions and delivery. We created a monster, we called it “backlog”. It lingers in the back of our minds, it sucks our energy and time.

What we logged for next week, later this month, or next year is due, it is to be acted on, it is to be delegated. Today.

The constraint is the point. Scarcity forces the ruthlessness abundance erodes.

A new week is here, you face yet another choice look through a ridiculous amount of features and decide: keep, delay, or kill. The sad news is there will never be a finish line. This thing keeps growing, every meeting, every argument the senior manager had with his wife last night is converted into a set feature for individual contributors.

What’s crazy is this is how lights stay on, raising expectations, keeping teams busy, ensuring there is always one deliverable, one item, one email, one meeting, one bug, one chore, one more thing on your to do list. A never ending cycle of utterly redundant work. Work that could be thrown away, work that could be automated, work that could done by machines.

The investor awaits the next release, the user awaits the next version, the team awaits the next sprint. We built engines that keep us busy and completely forgot the point of the work. Work is value creation. Value creation has nothing to do with busy or ceremonies. Value creation is: “what is the problem?”, “what is the solution?”, and “what is the path of least resistance for us to get there?”

The next time you look at this monstrous backlog, ask yourself: “How do I solve this problem, once, for everyone, forever?”. Kill it with force, kill it with automation and systems, kill with the team and for the team.