Every project management tool - from the small to-do-list app up to Jira - is built for the people organizing the work. Not for the people actually doing it. But that’s you. And that’s why you are dreading it.

The apps all recite the same promise, from that same book: Getting things done. But what they really optimise for is organizing the things. And as the person doing the work, this isn’t the important part. You can feel that gap even if you can’t put your finger on it: the always growing backlog, the kanban board that drifts out of sync with reality, the status update no one reads. All this is just process. Theater of control. None of it gets the work done faster – it does the opposite. You only do it because the project manager nags you about it.

Now imagine there was no project manager. Say you’re small group of friends organizing a trip. Or a few developers working on a fun open-source side project. Nobody wants to do “project management”. But if you reach for any of these tools to get organized– and sooner or later with growing complexity you have to – you find it forcing that role onto someone – usually the one, who cares the most. Everyone else quietly goes along with it, relieved they don’t have to do it.

So the very tool that was meant to make you more organized turns against you. Now you’re the one updating tickets, because no one else will. You have less time for the actual fun part, the doing, and instead spend it chasing the others, who’ve come to dread the tool and, eventually, you. You’ve become the one nagging. What was meant to relieve everyone becomes frustration. For everyone involved. Best case, the tool is just abandonned. Worst case, it turns into a constant source of conflict, and the unvoluntary project manager burns out and quits. So you fall back running everything on WhatsApp, Slack or Discord – with all its flaws and chaos. But at least you don’t have to triage tickets anymore.

The thing, though: the problem isn’t with the group. The problem is with the tool. Or better, how it is designed: it is built for and assumes a person whose job is to manage and organize the project. In a group of equals, nobody ever signed up for that. You don’t need more project management. You need tools that don’t require a project manager at all.