Productivity Glossary

A backlog is a prioritized list of tasks, features, or ideas that haven't been started yet. It serves as a holding area for work you intend to do eventually, keeping it separate from what you're actively working on today.

Daily planning is the practice of deciding — before your day starts — what you will work on today. It means reviewing your tasks, selecting the ones that matter most, and committing to a realistic plan for the next 8-12 hours.

Drag and drop is an interaction pattern where you click and hold an element (like a task card), move it to a new position, and release it. In task management, it's the most natural way to move tasks between workflow stages — like dragging a card from 'To Do' to 'Done.'

Focus, in a productivity context, is the ability to direct your attention to a single task and sustain that attention long enough to make meaningful progress. It's less about willpower and more about eliminating the distractions and decisions that compete for your attention.

Kanban is a visual workflow method where tasks move across columns on a board — typically from 'To Do' to 'In Progress' to 'Done.' Originally developed at Toyota for manufacturing, it's now one of the most popular ways to manage personal and team tasks.

Productivity is the ratio of meaningful output to time and effort spent. It's not about doing more things — it's about doing the right things effectively. True productivity means finishing what matters, not just staying busy.

Sprint planning is a time-boxed meeting in Scrum where a team selects tasks from the backlog to complete during a fixed period (usually 1-2 weeks). The goal is to commit to a realistic chunk of work and focus on delivering it by the end of the sprint.

Task management is the process of organizing, tracking, and completing tasks — from capturing what needs to be done, to prioritizing it, working on it, and marking it complete. It can be as simple as a sticky note or as complex as enterprise project management software.

A WIP (Work in Progress) limit is a cap on how many tasks can be in a particular workflow stage at the same time. The idea is simple: by limiting how much you're actively working on, you finish things faster and reduce context switching.