Two filters that cut my list down faster than any time-tracking exercise.
Does the cost scale with volume? A task that eats two hours a month and stays two hours at double the spend is just overhead. Overhead can wait forever. But a task that takes two hours now and four when you double the budget? That's a liability, and it compounds exactly when you're drowning in Q4 pushes and can't afford the distraction. That one jumps the queue even if the raw minutes look smaller.
Does it fail silently? Some processes scream when they break, you catch the error same-day and move on. Others quietly corrupt a number that nobody catches until a client disputes a CPA report three months later. That second kind gets fixed regardless of the time cost, because the real damage isn't the hours. It's the reconciliation you can't win when your only source of truth is a color-coded sheet and a prayer.
If both answers are no, it's annoying but not expensive. The right move is genuinely to live with it. Not every irritation deserves a budget line, and the list gets manageable once you accept that.
