The Fourteen-Day Rule
While building a responsibilities chart for the three Common Ground principals, I set a hard limit on how long any to-do can live.
The old system let to-do items auto-archive quietly after seven days, which meant things could sit unresolved forever without anyone deciding anything. While drawing up a responsibilities chart for the three CG principals, I used it to fix the pattern.
I made it a hard rule across the system: no to-do lives past fourteen days. On day fourteen the item ships or dies, no exceptions. Day seven brings a yellow flag, and day twelve forces a red-flag decision.
A to-do should never last longer than two weeks. The quiet auto-archive let items rot while nobody owned the decision to kill them. A forced, loud choice is the honest one, even if what you choose is to kill the item.
It covers all three principals' work streams equally. The gauge I use is a ship-to-kill ratio of roughly 60 to 40. Too many kills means intake is too loose, and too many ships means intake is too narrow.
Quietly letting something vanish is a different thing from deciding to end it, and only the second is honest. The rule makes a person decide, so a system's silence never decides for them.
Story details
| Type | Standing on principle |
|---|---|
| Year | 2026-05 |
| Firm telling | on the Common Ground wiki |