Something you need hasn't arrived. It's been three weeks.
The email you haven't sent takes ninety seconds to write, and you've not written it, because it implies somebody hasn't done something — which is true and slightly rude to notice. So you wait another week, and the waiting becomes mutual, and the project sits still.
Chasing is a small unpleasant task, and small unpleasant tasks lose to almost everything. It's also, usually, the entire thing standing between you and progress.
What you're actually reluctant about
Three things, and naming them helps more than resolve does.
The implied accusation. Following up says you said you'd do this and you haven't, however politely it's phrased, and most people would rather not say that to anyone.
The available excuse. There's always a comfortable reading — they're busy, it's probably coming, it's only been three weeks — which is free, costs nothing to adopt, and is usually true. Usually true is what makes it so effective.
And the absence of reward. You send the follow-up and the thing you wanted still hasn't arrived, so the immediate return on chasing is precisely zero. It only pays later, and only sometimes.
None of that is irrational. It's just a set of small forces all pointing the same direction, and the result is that the chasing quietly stops while the waiting continues.
The sequence
Four steps, escalating, and most things resolve at the first.
The nudge, after whatever was promised plus a few days. Short, no reproach, and offer them a way out: did this get lost? happy to resend if that's easier. Most delays are genuine forgetfulness rather than reluctance, and this clears the majority without anyone losing face.
The consequence, a week later. Not a threat — information about your own plans. I'm holding the schedule for this; if it's going to be after the 30th, let me know and I'll plan around it. People respond to the shape of someone else's plan far more reliably than to a request, because it converts a favour into a coordination problem.
Change the channel. An email ignored twice will be ignored a third time. Ring them, or catch them in person, or ask in whatever place they actually pay attention. This resolves a surprising number of things that a month of email did not.
Route around. Ask someone else, find another supplier, do the version of the work that doesn't need the thing. People skip this because the dependency feels fixed, and it usually isn't — it's just the most convenient of several options, and convenience stops mattering after six weeks.
The move that makes all of this easy is done at the start, before there's any awkwardness to navigate.
When you first mark something blocked, write two things: what you're waiting for and who owes it, and the date you'll escalate. Waiting on the surveyor for the valuation, requested 3 August, said a week. Chase on the 14th, different surveyor on the 28th.
Now the follow-up isn't a decision made in a moment of social discomfort. It's a task with a date on it, decided by a calmer version of you who had no feelings about it, and executing a scheduled task is much easier than initiating an awkward one.
That single practice removes most of what makes chasing hard.
Knowing what's reasonable
The interval depends entirely on what was agreed, and this is what separates appropriate chasing from being a nuisance.
Something promised for a date is late the day after that date. A supplier who said a week is late at ten days, and following up then is not pushy, it's the arrangement.
Something with a statutory or standard process is not late until the process is. Chasing a planning decision in week three of eight is announcing that you don't know how it works.
And a favour with no date attached is never late. A friend reading your draft, a colleague doing something outside their job — those are goodwill, and treating them like a supplier is a mistake that costs more than the draft is worth. If you need a date, the time to ask for one was when you asked for the favour.
Write which kind it is when you write the blocker. Half the difficulty resolves itself.
When to stop chasing
The counter-argument, because this advice can produce someone unbearable.
Some things aren't coming, and continuing to chase converts a small loss into a slow grinding one. If you've nudged, given a consequence, changed channel and been ignored, the answer has been given — it's just been given in a form that lets everyone avoid saying it.
There's also a real relational cost that doesn't appear in your project plan. Someone who follows up on day four of a favour teaches people to stop doing them favours, and that's a durable loss for a short-term gain.
And chasing can itself become the avoidance. If sending a fifth follow-up is more comfortable than finding a different route or doing the work another way, then the chasing is what you're doing instead of solving the problem.
The test: has anything about the situation changed since the last time you chased? If nothing has, another identical email isn't a chase, it's a habit.
Nineteen days, two outcomes
Two blocked goals, both nineteen days quiet.
Flat revaluation. The surveyor was asked on the 3rd and said a week. Nineteen days is twelve past the agreement, so this isn't waiting any more. The nudge goes that evening — did this get lost, happy to resend the details — and the report arrives the following morning, having been sitting in a drafts folder.
Feedback on the manuscript. Sent to a friend who reads slowly, no date offered because there wasn't one. Nineteen days is nothing. The correct action is none, and the correct feeling is none. The blocker note says no date agreed, don't chase before October, and it can sit there quietly for six weeks without costing either of them anything.
Same number, same silence, opposite responses — decided entirely by what was written down when the blocker was created.
What the app is asking for
Marking something blocked asks you to say what you're waiting on. That prompt exists because the sentence is where the useful information lives: whether it's reasonable, whether you ever actually asked, and what chasing would look like.
The number does the other half. Nineteen days sits at the top of the list until it's dealt with, which is what turns I should follow that up into something you do rather than something you keep meaning to.
Related: When you're waiting on somebody else · Stalled vs blocked: the difference that changes what you do next · When the blocker is you
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