Should a Tool Be Telling You What to Work on Next?

Your project management tool has opinions.

It sorts your tasks by priority. It highlights what's "due soon." It uses colored flags and urgency labels to tell you what deserves your attention. Some tools even use AI to suggest what you should work on next.

But here's the uncomfortable question: Should a tool be making that call?

The Illusion of Algorithmic Clarity

Tools promise to cut through the noise. They'll rank everything, calculate dependencies, estimate effort, and present you with a pristine, ordered list of exactly what to do and when.

Sounds great, right? Except it assumes the tool understands context better than you do.

It doesn't know that the "low priority" task is actually blocking three other people. It doesn't know your energy is shot and you need a small win. It doesn't know the stakeholder who's been patient for weeks is starting to get anxious.

Context matters. And no algorithm has enough of it.

What You Lose When You Automate Judgment

When you let the tool decide what's next, you stop exercising your own judgment. You stop asking the hard questions:

• What actually matters right now?
• What will unblock the most people?
• What aligns with where we're trying to go?

Instead, you just work down the list. You optimize for clearing tickets instead of delivering value.

And when the list is wrong (and it will be), you blame the system instead of reconsidering the priorities.

The Better Approach

Here's the thing: tools should inform your decisions, not make them for you.

A good system shows you what's in flight, what people are waiting on, and what's been sitting too long. Then it gets out of the way and lets you decide.

Because you know your team. You know the stakes. You know what "urgent" really means versus what just got tagged that way because someone panicked.

You should be driving the work. Not the other way around.

The moment you find yourself reflexively doing what the tool tells you to do without questioning it? That's when you know you've handed over too much control.

Take it back.