It’s been 10 years since I began applying Agile and Scrum frameworks to my personal projects and goals. It worked incredibly well, despite contradicting almost every productivity advice you hear on the internet and self-help books. Today I want to revisit the foundation of it all, the place where Agile framework begins – the idea of backlog. If you are interested, this is the first post I wrote 3 years ago on the topic of backlog.
Backlog was my ticket out from chaotic living
I used to run in circles and have a never-ending to-do list. A lot of action was taking place, but the results were… meh.
When reflecting on my year, I didn’t see substantial progress in any areas. I produced little tangible results. I didn’t have anything I could point at and proudly say, “Look, I’ve made this!”
It was frustrating. Effort and time were spent. It wasn’t that I spent days watching Netflix and being lazy. I was busy. I had colour-coded and neatly organized to-do lists. However, the tangible output was low.
Agile shifted all of this for me. It allowed me to see meaningful progress in my life instead of being stuck in a daily hamster wheel.
The reality of “free time”
We all have a very limited amount of time to dedicate to our projects, goals, initiatives, interests, and hobbies.
From my decade-long personal experience and working with people in different fields, I’d say 1-2 hours a day is the absolute maximum. Even if you are self-employed or work in academia, hold your horses. Don’t assume you are much different from the rest of us. Your time is still eaten up by https://monthlymethod.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/fa9bf5d4-d557-42b4-a37a-708da1d9a02a.jpgistrative tasks, emails, meetings, and dealing with clients.
An hour of focused time per day to dedicate to our goals and projects.
That’s how little time we have.
It makes sense to spend it on things that truly matter.
How to find what truly matters
We always have more ideas on how we can spend our time than the time available.
Unlimited ideas vs. Limited amount of time
How do we choose?
We must measure the quality of all the ideas and projects we want to pursue.
And how do they measure the quality of ideas? The same way we measure the quality of pretty much anything else in our life. We measure it with time.
How well does it hold with time?
Quality is always a function of time.
You can’t call an object high-quality if it falls apart after the first use.
How about ideas?
What are considered high-quality books? The ones that last with time.
That’s why we have classic literature.
It was relevant 200 years ago. It was relevant 100 years ago. It was relevant 50 years ago. It’s still relevant today; chances are, it will still be relevant 100 years from now.
The longer it was relevant before this point in time, the longer it will be relevant in the future.
Measuring the quality of our goals
Now let’s look at our ideas.
If you have an idea and it feels exciting and promising at the moment, it’s normal. They all do. But let’s say you had an idea 6 months ago. It still felt exciting 3 months later. It feels exciting and promising today. It’s likely a good idea, and you should pursue it.
But most of our ideas feel exciting, promising, amazing, fun, and easy today. But if we sleep on it, even one night, it won’t seem as rosy tomorrow.
We can’t look into the future, but we can look into the past
Quality is a function of time.
We can’t measure the quality of the idea going forward because we can’t look into the future. We can’t predict how excited we’ll be about this project six months from now. But we can look back and see how excited we were about it six months ago, three months ago, yesterday.
Of course, you don’t have to wait six months. It can be longer, it can be shorter. But passing your potential goals through a test of time is always a good idea.
#1 time-management hack Agile gives you
Most of our ideas are fleeting. They don’t hold with time.
It’s good news. It means that we can save time. But only if we practice recording all these ideas somewhere (hint—backlog), allowing some time to pass, and then reviewing them.
Don’t be reactive.
Don’t jump into things and opportunities.
Most of them are stupid.
Most of them are not worth your time.
And you will clearly see it if you allow for some time to go by.
Pursuing goals and finishing projects is already hard work. It requires discipline, time, and a lot of mental resources. We should use these limited resources on the things that count. The only way to find out if something counts is to test it with time.
Let the ideas age and see if they improve with time or they start to stink.
Backlog is the vault that lets your idea age and reveal its true value
In Agile and Scrum, there is a tool designed specifically for this purpose. It’s called backlog. It’s a place where you record all your ideas, projects, and initiatives. And you let them age.
It is a vault that reliably holds your ideas. It’s protecting them, so you don’t forget them. They won’t be lost. It’s there so that your brain can relax and focus on the current sprint goals without trying to remember that breakthrough idea you just had.
Example: YouTube channel
The idea of starting a YouTube channel has been on my backlog for the last five years.
It aged really well. I never removed it. I always wanted to do it.
I was excited about it five years ago when I put it on my backlog.
I was excited three years ago.
Now that I have started my YouTube channel and the honeymoon stage is over, I’m still happy about the project despite all the time it takes to record and edit the videos.
Of course, you don’t have to wait five years to do things, but it’s a smart idea to give emotions a couple of days to cool down.
Backlog is like a special savings account
Throughout the sprint, you are only allowed to put things in and never to pull things out.
It’s like a savings account with which you can only withdraw money on a specific day of the month. You can make unlimited contributions throughout the month, but you can only withdraw them on the last Friday of the month.
When using a backlog, you’re allowed to put things in, but you’re only allowed to pull things out when you’re doing sprint planning. This happens once a month in my case, because three weeks is my preferred length of a sprint.
The ideas and goals that I choose to pursue are at least a few weeks old. If I didn’t lose the level of enthusiasm after recording this idea in the backlog, it’s likely a good idea and I should pursue it.
When the true magic of backlog happens
In reality, I end up deleting a bunch of things that I have entered because they are no longer relevant. During these moments, I realise how much time I just saved by not jumping into something that lost its relevance so quickly.
Had I jumped into the action mode right away, my life would’ve felt much more chaotic. I would’ve jumped from one idea to another without ever accomplishing (aka ‘shipping’) anything. And that’s how it used to be before I discovered Agile. My days were filled with frantic energy. I had to-do lists that were a mile long. By the end of the year, though, I didn’t find the things I worked on meaningful.
The backlog is what prevents you from wasting your time on things that don’t matter. The practice of keeping a backlog and only pulling things out once a month allows me to live a more intentional life.
My actions have a higher degree of calibration.
There is no unnecessary doing.
How to start your own backlog
Okay, now let’s turn to the practical side of having a backlog. How do you actually implement it?
I found the simple text file to be the best, the simplest, the cleanest solution for keeping a backlog.
My backlog is a simple Notes file on my phone that is synced with my laptop. I use Apple products, so the Notes app comes already preinstalled on all of them. It automatically syncs the notes across my devices. It’s as low-tech as you can possibly get.
Your backlog needs be somewhere you can easily access it when you’re on the go. Because your best ideas never happen when you are at your desk.
I pin mine to the top of my Notes, so it’s easily accessible and I don’t have to search for it.
Interesting fact: the other notes (Not another habit and The physics of change) also serve as sort of a backlog for a framework I’m currently brainstorming – my take on how to achieve consistency without the traditional habit-building nonsense that never works. I’m currently testing the framework, recording my results, and collecting all the ideas, useful examples, screenshots, pictures, and quotes in one place. This is to show that the idea of a backlog is so awesome, it spills into other areas of your life. I gave more examples in my first backlog post as well.
What does a backlog file look like?
It’s going to look messy. Get over it. Embrace it. And it’s how it’s supposed to be.
When you put things in, it doesn’t have to be pretty.
It doesn’t have to be in full sentences.
It doesn’t have to have all the context.
This is how my backlog looks throughout the sprint. It’s all over the place, with things written in English and Russian. There is no logic behind how things are formatted.
Again, the main purpose of a backlog is to prevent reacting to an idea. Any idea during the sprint is a destruction. I don’t care how good it is. Everything seems ground-breaking and urgent during the sprint. But it’s just a destruction.
How to use a backlog
A new shiny idea goes into the backlog.
It ages.
If you think it’s still a good idea, you compare it with the other candidates.
If it wins the competition, you commit to it for the next sprint.
It’s that simple.
What you can do today
Start a simple text document that is easily synced between your phone and your laptop.
Call it a backlog.
Save it. Pin it. Make it easily accessible when you are on the go.
Investing in quality
We all understand that we shouldn’t spend our hard-earned money on things that break quickly. We want to buy high-quality things that last a long time. But our time is more valuable than money. We should be even more careful about how we choose to spend our time.
We don’t need to compete for ideas. Ideas need to compete for our time.
Counterintuitive advice to wait
I’m fully aware that waiting is counterintuitive when you want to do something great with your life. It goes against everything you hear on the internet. It’s definitely not your hustle-culture-bro, rah-rah-rah kind of advice. But I’ve been doing it for the last 10 years, and can’t imagine a scenario where I would go back.
I know that you’re always told to seize the moment. Act now. Don’t procrastinate. But I invite you to step out of this productivity hysteria, this belief that everything is urgent, ASAP, now-or-never and realize that no, not everything is urgent. Not everything is important. Most of our projects, goals, and initiatives can wait a month. We will not ruin our lives by waiting a few weeks.
Waiting will help us distinguish the essential from the trivial. And it will prevent us from this chaotic, hysterical, burned-out state of existence that we often find ourselves in.
If you are new to Agile philosophy, you can find the core principles on the Start Here page.
If you want to read the most recent posts, click here.
If you are tired of online research and the mental gymnastics of adapting the system to your situation and want me to hold your hand and guide you through your first sprint, click here.
You might find these posts interesting:
- Sprint Planning for Personal Productivity
- This is how Agile makes you 2X more productive every month
- Sprint cycle overview
- How to set up a temporary scrum board
- Stop the productivity shopping spree
