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technique
Closed list
1 creator use or recommend it
▲ 1 active in the last 90 days
1 use
Last discussed Oct 20, 2026
A to-do technique that keeps an open list of everything plus a short, fixed-length closed list of near-term tasks. Nothing new is added to the closed list until a slot is freed.
Recently discussed in
The 996 Grind Gets Time All Wrong — with Oliver Burkeman
Oliver Burkeman · Oct 20, 2026
What creators say
OB
Oliver Burkeman
uses
Used for: Limiting active work to a handful of near-term tasks
Praised: Makes visible that you can only work on a handful of things at once; gives a ...
vs: Same logic as Kanban systems
"I'm always using some version of a closed list. That is the simple one that I've written about. You keep two lists. One is a sort of open list of absolutely everything that's on your plate. And then the second is a closed list that might have five..."
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