Just close all issues 🗑️

Take a good look at your issue tracker.

Are you still using it to effectively coordinate actual work, or has it started to drift away from reality?

• Does it contain outdated or irrelevant things?
• Is your backlog longer than you can hope to finish within a reasonable time frame?
• Are there more unresolved issues now than there was a month ago?
• Do you have issues that have been around unresolved for more than six months?
• Has your backlog become, as a former colleague of mine put it, “the place where ideas goes to die”?

If your answer to any of these questions is “yes”, you may be suffering of “chronic backlog disorder”.

If you do, the doctor recommends a “backlog detox”. It is a both simple and effective remedy. Just close all issues. All of them. Yes, all.

This might sound dangerous, reckless or even stupid. Believing this is a normal symptom of the disorder you are suffering from. In fact, removing all issues is really quite safe.

“Will I not lose all of my precious issues?”, you might ask. Well, yes, you will. And that is the point. Because there are really two types of issues. Those that you actually need, and those you don’t. Issues that you actually need will not be lost forever. You will rediscover them. If you don’t, then they were not that important and can simply be left closed.¹

Put differently, if your issue tracker were to disappear over night, would development stop? Or would you still know what was actually important and needed to be done?