One board that tells you what to do Monday

A to-do list tells you what you meant to do. It does not tell you what is actually happening, and after about forty items it becomes a monument to guilt that you stop opening. A board is different: it holds the truth about where every single thing stands.

Four piles, and nothing else

Waiting on somebody. Waiting on you. Running fine. Dead. Every project in your business is in exactly one of those, and most people cannot say which without thinking about it for a minute, which is the problem.

"Dead" is a real pile and it needs to be visible. Things that are over should be marked over, not quietly left in the list where they keep costing you attention every time your eye passes them.

One honest sentence each

Not a status word. A sentence a stranger could read. "Sent the demo the 3rd, no reply, calling Thursday" tells you what to do. "In progress" tells you nothing and is usually a lie.

The part every tracker gets wrong

There has to be somewhere to write down what the person said back. Somebody tells you no on a Tuesday afternoon and if there is nowhere to put that, it lives in your head for a week and then it is gone, along with the reason, which was the valuable part.

Two fields fix it. One for your own answer or decision. One dated log of every call and reply. That is the difference between a board you keep and a board you abandon in March.

Rebuild it, don't just re-read it

Why it works when a to-do list does not

Because on Monday morning you are not asking "what should I do," which is an overwhelming question. You are asking "what is waiting on me," which is usually four things, and four things is a morning.

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