Most product teams treat the backlog as a record of intentions — a list of things we decided to build. But a backlog is actually a record of past attention, and past attention decays. The 11th-century Jain philosopher Hemacandra developed a doctrine called *anekāntavāda* — the idea that any object of knowledge has multiple, simultaneous, irreducibly valid aspects, none of which is the whole truth. Applied to product management, this is a precise critique of how backlogs ossify: an item written six months ago captured one aspect of a real problem, under one set of conditions, from one stakeholder's vantage point. The team then treats that captured sliver as if it *is* the problem, rather than as a dated perspective on it. The practical consequence is structural: backlogs should not be groomed — they should be interrogated. Each item deserves a question not about priority but about validity — does the original observation still hold, or have the conditions that made this seem important quietly changed? The discipline isn't ordering the list. It's asking whether the list is still describing reality.

Pick one item that has survived three or more backlog grooming sessions. What were the original conditions that made it feel urgent — and have those conditions actually changed?

Drawing from Jain Epistemology (Anekāntavāda) — Hemacandra (Yogaśāstra, c. 1175 CE)