The Blocker Buried in Your To-Do List

The app has been "almost ready" for nine days. Looking back, you can see why: the whole thing is waiting on an API key you asked for once and never chased. That task was in your list the entire time — line eleven of nineteen, looking exactly like every other line.

Part 3 of No Process. The fix isn't more discipline. It's making stuck work look different.

The short answer#

• A blocked task looks like any other line on a list, so it quietly waits for days while you work on easier things.
• Mark stuck tasks explicitly, with the reason — 'waiting for API key', not just 'stuck'.
• Treat a week without movement as stuck too, even if nobody said so.
• Look at stuck work first every morning: unblock it, ask for what you need, or park it on purpose.

Why blockers hide#

A to-do list treats every item the same. That's fine for work you can do. It's terrible for work you can't do yet, because:

• You skip it without noticing. Each day you pick something you can move, which is never the blocked task.
• Blocked doesn't mean urgent-looking. "Store listing" looks harmless even when it's waiting on a payment form nobody filled in.
• The blocker is often outside the repo — a key, a reply, an account — so nothing in the code reminds you.

With several projects, the effect multiplies. The stuck line is one of dozens.

Name it, with the reason#

The first fix is simple: when a task can't move, mark it stuck and say why.

Piston        stuck: waiting for API key (asked 09-22)
Tip Split     Phase 5/6 — next: captions for 3 screenshots
Dog Training  Phase 5/9 — next: draft section 2

The reason matters. "Stuck" alone is a feeling. "Waiting for API key, asked on the 22nd" is something you can act on — chase it, find another way, or decide to wait.

Silence counts as stuck#

Some tasks never get marked stuck. They just stop moving. The agent hit a wall, you moved on, and nobody wrote it down.

A good rule: a task that hasn't changed for a week is stuck, whether or not someone said so. That's why writing the next step and phase in the repo helps — you can see when they last changed.

Stuck first, every morning#

Put stuck tasks at the top of what you look at each day and deal with them before anything else. For each one, choose:

1. Unblock it — send the email, chase the key, make the decision.
2. Work around it — change the plan so the blocker doesn't matter.
3. Park it — move it to the backlog, with the reason, on purpose.

This is step one of the morning routine in running 10 projects in parallel, and it's one of the four parts of a minimum process.

Keep reading#

• No Process, Just Prompts: Why Solo AI Projects Fall Apart
• What Was the Next Step? Write It Down Before You Stop
• How to Run 10 Side Projects in Parallel with AI Agents