I built a small experiment to test a hypothesis I've observed: when teams are under real pressure, managers revert to a document.

https://joeyguerra.com/yesterday-today.html

I've noticed this behavior in myself as well as other managers who are responsible for task execution and team coordination. When deadlines are tight, ambiguity is high, coordination is super important - managers and teams often abandon formal tools and just open a document to track and refine a list of todos.

Observation: Every day the manager shares their screen, showing Notepad or Google Docs, and just lists out what to do. As the days go by, this UX shows what moved yesterday/was accomplished and what must happen today.

In the process of "going through the list" tasks get refined, together as a team, in real time.

Progress is visible by the day, not by status or workflow stage (like Kanban, Jira, etc).

The hypothesis is that we default to documents because they make the "flow of work over time" visible. My belief is that progression beats abstract states.

The app is intentionally minimal. I'm trying to isolate why the document works before adding anything else.

I'd love feedback on: - Does this model match how you've seen teams operate under pressure? What's your experience? - What feels fundamentally right? wrong? - Where does this fall apart in a real team? - What would you immediately want to add or intentionally keep out? gut reaction.

I appreciate any pushback, critique, or "this reminds me of ..." reactions.

Thanks ya'll.