Why lists stall
Three reasons, and none of them are that you are lazy.
- The same request arrives in five different wordings and looks like five items. It is one piece of work.
- Nothing in the list says whether it is worth doing. A request from your best customer and a request from somebody who will never pay look identical.
- The distance from a good idea to finished work is an afternoon you do not have, so it only happens when the pressure gets high enough.
What changes
Everything that arrives comes back decided, immediately, and waits somewhere where the only two options are yes and no.
The judgement is what unblocks the pile. It tells you whether your product needs this, measured against your own description of what your product is for, and whether the person asking is somebody you are building for. Half of most lists is requests from people who were never your customer. Rejecting those is not a failure. It is the decision you were avoiding.
The ones you approve get built. Related ones get built together, so the five wordings of one request become one piece of work.
Working through the pile you already have
You do not have to wait for new requests. Paste the existing list in, in batches. You get a decision on each one and something you can clear in an afternoon.
Most people find the same shape. About a third of the list is three requests wearing different clothes. About a third is from people outside who they are for. The last third is a real plan that was buried under the other two thirds.
Saying no is the feature
A tool that accepts everything has just moved your list somewhere prettier. The most useful things you will read are the ones scoring low, with the reasoning attached, so you can say no quickly and know exactly why.