Measuring Task List Backlog

Tl;DR

I created a tool called TODO Info to help me manage my task list and prioritize tasks that are not urgent but still important to me. The tool is open-source.

Idea

One indicator of how busy I am is the number of tasks in my task list. Typically, my task list contains between 7-15 tasks, but during particularly busy times, it can get longer.

One frustrating aspect of my task list is that some tasks produce new tasks, meaning that my task counter remains unchanged even when I complete a task. The tool measures the total backlog of tasks (in days) and displays the oldest tasks.

Month of expriment

After one month of daily use I got this chart:

I still have a huge backlog, but now I try to do some amount of the oldest tasks. Most often it is interesting tasks that impact my growth but which I always don’t have “time” for.

Implementation

The Graph API for MS TODO has some limitations. It does not return information about the assingedTo field (1)(2), so I use the hashtag #todo-info-skip to exclude the task from the list age measurement.