I sat down this morning wanting to knock out some easy stuff before lunch. I keep a kanban board for TenderNest so I don't have to trust my memory about what's outstanding. Four small bugs in the backlog looked suitable: no redesign, no waiting on anyone else, just fix-it-and-move-on stuff.
I picked the four and went through them one by one, expecting four small wins by lunchtime.
Two of them didn't exist anymore.
Not "mostly fixed" or "fixed but not shipped yet." I'd actually fixed them weeks ago, while working on other things. I'd solved one as a side effect of moving error tracking to a new provider and cleaning up some billing code. I'd fixed the other during a bigger sweep through the inbox screen, where I'd been aiming at something else entirely.
Neither commit referenced the board card. I'd closed my own backlog items without reading the backlog.
There's something a bit funny about keeping a board specifically so you don't lose track of what needs doing, and then losing track of what you've already done instead. The board was behind. I'd moved the code on and forgotten to bring the record with it. When you're the only person writing both, there's nobody else to point that out.
Here's the honest tally for the morning: I fixed one real bug, a missing bit of session handling I needed to build from scratch. Another needed me to hold the phone and watch it fail, rather than spend more time staring at source. I crossed off the other two with nothing to show for it but an updated code comment. Four items picked, one real fix. Still a good morning. Just not the one I sat down expecting.
