The Three Stage Workflow That Clears Your Mind

Most workflow systems are designed to track work from start to finish. They move items through stages like “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” The goal is visibility: know what is happening, who is doing it, and what comes next.

There is nothing wrong with that. But it optimizes for throughput, not for clarity. You can have a beautifully visualized workflow board with 47 cards across six columns and still feel like you are drowning.

Nix It takes a different approach. Instead of tracking work through stages of progress, it processes items through three stages of elimination. The goal is not to see all your work. The goal is to hold as little as possible.

The Three Stages

Every item that touches your world moves through the same flow: Filter, Distill, Eliminate. These are not columns on a board. They are phases that determine whether something stays in your system and, if it does, how it exists there.

Stage 1: Filter

Filtering is what happens before something enters your system. This is the most important stage because the cheapest item to manage is the one that never gets tracked at all.

When something appears in your world, an email, a request from a colleague, a task from a meeting, an idea that pops into your head, the first question is always: what are the consequences of not tracking this?

Not “is this interesting?” Not “might I need this later?” Not “should I keep this just in case?” The question is specifically about consequences. If you ignore this entirely, what happens?

For a surprising number of things, the answer is nothing. The newsletter you were cc’d on. The meeting notes someone shared for reference. The idea you had for a blog post you will probably never write. These items carry no real consequence when ignored. They should never enter your system.

For items that do carry consequences, there is a secondary filter: can you handle it right now? If something takes less than two minutes, do it immediately and eliminate it. Reply to the email. Send the file. Answer the question. The item enters and exits your system in a single motion, never occupying space on your canvas.

Only items that carry real consequences and require more than two minutes of effort should move forward.

Stage 2: Distill

Items that survive filtering land on the canvas. This is where they live until they can be eliminated. But even here, the system is designed to minimize what you see.

Every item on the canvas has a state based on who owns the next action. There are three states:

Owned means you need to act. These are things where the ball is in your court.

Delegated means someone else needs to act. You are waiting on a colleague, a vendor, a client. The item is not in your hands right now.

Pending means an event needs to occur. A date needs to arrive. A decision needs to be made elsewhere. Something external needs to happen before you can move forward.

Separating items by state immediately clarifies what you can actually work on right now versus what is waiting on something outside your control. Most people have these all mixed together in a single list, which makes everything feel urgent and actionable even when half of it is waiting on someone else.

On top of state, every item has a visibility setting. Owned items are typically visible because they represent your active work. Delegated and Pending items are typically hidden because there is nothing you can do about them right now. They are out of sight, not because they are forgotten, but because showing them would only add noise.

Hidden items surface through triggers. A time-based trigger reveals an item on a specific date or after a set duration (“check back on this in three days”). An event-based trigger reveals an item when a condition is met (“show this when the contract is signed”). Every hidden item must have at least one trigger. If something could hide forever, it should probably be eliminated instead.

The result is a canvas that shows you only what is relevant right now. Not everything you are responsible for. Not everything that is in flight. Just the items where you are the one who needs to act, at this moment.

Stage 3: Eliminate

Every item’s final destination is removal from the canvas. This happens in one of two ways.

Completion means the item reached its natural conclusion. The task is done. The email is answered. The project is delivered. This is the way most people think about finishing work.

Deletion means the item is simply removed. It is no longer relevant. Circumstances changed. It was not worth the effort. Nobody cares anymore. This is the way most people avoid thinking about finishing work, because it feels like failure.

In Nix It, both exits are equally valid. The system draws no distinction between a completed task and a deleted one. They are both eliminations. This is important because it removes the guilt associated with dropping things. If something can be deleted without consequence, deleting it is not failure. It is clarity.

The Weekly Review

Once a week, you look at everything on your canvas, visible and hidden, and challenge each item’s right to exist. The question is not “what is the status of this?” The question is “does this still deserve space in my system?”

Items that have been sitting for weeks without movement are especially suspect. The older an item is, the harder it should be to justify keeping it. If something has been on your canvas for a month and you have not touched it, that is a strong signal that it can be eliminated.

The review is not about catching things you missed. It is about actively reducing your load. Every item you eliminate in the review is space recovered for the work that actually matters.

Why This Feels Different

Traditional workflow systems are additive. You capture things, track things, organize things, and your system grows. The work of maintaining the system grows with it. Eventually you spend real time just keeping the machine running.

Nix It is subtractive. The entire flow pushes toward less. Filter aggressively so less enters. Distill what remains so you see less at any given time. Eliminate constantly so less accumulates. Review regularly to catch anything that should have been eliminated sooner.

The result is not a comprehensive view of everything on your plate. It is a clear view of what actually needs your attention right now. And that clarity, not organization, is what actually makes you productive.

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Nix It is a work management system that prioritizes elimination over organization. Learn more and try it free.