What does each item carry?#
Five things: the judgment needed, who owns it, the evidence and its gaps, the options, and what it costs to keep waiting. Naming the gaps in the evidence matters as much as the evidence — a decision made on material that looks complete and is not is worse than one made knowingly under uncertainty.
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Why does the cost of waiting matter?#
Because that field turns a list into a priority order. Without it every item looks equally urgent and the queue is worked in arrival order, which is the one ordering guaranteed to be wrong.
A queue that stays longer than its owner's attention budget is a design problem, not a personal one. It is the signal to reduce incoming work, improve the evidence, move the decision, or automate a check that has earned it.