Project Management

The Blocker Buried in Your To-Do List

A stuck task looks just like every other line on your list, so it sits there for a week. How to make blockers visible and deal with them first each day.

By Tu Nguyen · · 2 min read.md

A worried developer rests her chin on her hand, looking at a long task list with one item marked red.

The app has been “almost ready” for nine days. Looking back, you can see why: the whole thing is waiting on an API key you asked for once and never chased. That task was in your list the entire time — line eleven of nineteen, looking exactly like every other line.

Part 3 of No Process. The fix isn’t more discipline. It’s making stuck work look different.

Why blockers hide

A to-do list treats every item the same. That’s fine for work you can do. It’s terrible for work you can’t do yet, because:

  • You skip it without noticing. Each day you pick something you can move, which is never the blocked task.
  • Blocked doesn’t mean urgent-looking. “Store listing” looks harmless even when it’s waiting on a payment form nobody filled in.
  • The blocker is often outside the repo — a key, a reply, an account — so nothing in the code reminds you.

With several projects, the effect multiplies. The stuck line is one of dozens.

Name it, with the reason

The first fix is simple: when a task can’t move, mark it stuck and say why.

Piston        stuck: waiting for API key (asked 09-22)
Tip Split     Phase 5/6 — next: captions for 3 screenshots
Dog Training  Phase 5/9 — next: draft section 2

The reason matters. “Stuck” alone is a feeling. “Waiting for API key, asked on the 22nd” is something you can act on — chase it, find another way, or decide to wait.

Silence counts as stuck

Some tasks never get marked stuck. They just stop moving. The agent hit a wall, you moved on, and nobody wrote it down.

A good rule: a task that hasn’t changed for a week is stuck, whether or not someone said so. That’s why writing the next step and phase in the repo helps — you can see when they last changed.

Stuck first, every morning

Put stuck tasks at the top of what you look at each day and deal with them before anything else. For each one, choose:

  1. Unblock it — send the email, chase the key, make the decision.
  2. Work around it — change the plan so the blocker doesn’t matter.
  3. Park it — move it to the backlog, with the reason, on purpose.

This is step one of the morning routine in running 10 projects in parallel, and it’s one of the four parts of a minimum process.

Where ShotMatic fits

In ShotMatic, a blocker — or seven days of silence — gives a task a red dot and floats it to the top of its board. The side menu shows a red dot on any board with stuck work, so you see it before anything else.

FAQ

How do I keep track of blocked tasks?

Give stuck tasks an explicit flag and a one-line reason, and sort them to the top of whatever list you look at every morning.

When should a task count as stuck?

When it can't move without something outside your control — or when it hasn't moved for about a week, which usually means there's a blocker nobody named.

What do I do with a task I can't unblock?

Park it on purpose: move it to the backlog with the reason. A parked task is a decision; a forgotten stuck task is a leak.

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