# Read a card's age at a glance

Next to every card's state there is a small counter, `5d`, saying how long
the card has sat in its **current state**. It is on by default, it colors
nothing, and its whole job is the daily question: *which card have we stopped
moving?*

## Before you start

Nothing. The counter reads `State Change Date`, a system field every hosted
process already has on every type, so there is no field to create and no setting
to fill in. A named board can turn it off under **Settings → Cards → Fields**
(*Show time in current state on cards*).

## Days, or hours, or minutes: the board decides

The counter says `5d` on most boards because most work takes days. A board where
everything starts and finishes inside a single day would read `0d` on every
card, which tells you nothing at all, so such a board counts in **hours**
instead, and one faster still in minutes. The unit is read from your own
durations, there is nothing to configure, and the whole board uses one unit: the
counter, the Aging WIP chart's axis and every tooltip always agree.

The work in motion gets the first say: the age of started, unfinished cards
and the time cards spend in columns where work is moving. How long a finished
card has been lying in Done, or a request has been waiting in New, does not
pick the unit, because otherwise a fast board would be dragged back to days by every
item that lingers after (or before) the work. Their counters still show, in
the board's unit, so a request three days deep in New reads `72h` on a board
of hours, a big number on exactly the card someone should pick up. Only a
board with nothing in motion at all, a pure intake, say, before anything is
picked up, takes its unit from whatever it does show.

The scale follows the slowest work, not the fastest. If people and something
quicker work side by side on one board, it stays in days, and the fast work
gathers into a single countable point near zero rather than a smear.

One thing deliberately stays in days wherever you see it: a limit **you** set,
and the `@Today` macros in style rules. Those are numbers you wrote, not
measurements we took.

## What the number means, and what it does not

"Age" can mean three different numbers, and confusing them leads to wrong
conclusions about your own process. The counter is the first of these:

- **Days in current state.** What the pill shows. Counted from the last state
  change, and **any** state change resets it, including a move backwards.
  Answers: *is this unusual for this step?*
- **Work item age.** Days since the item first entered an In Progress state,
  across every step since. No ordinary field holds it (the state-change date
  resets on each transition), so it comes from the Analytics service, and
  [Read the board by age at the daily meeting](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/read-the-board-by-age/) uses it. Answers: *is this unusual for this process?*
- **Cycle time.** The same span, but for finished items only. It is a
  property of work that is done, not of work on the board.

Two edges worth knowing, because they are exactly where the first two numbers
disagree:

- **A card moved backwards**, reopened from *Done* to *In Progress* yesterday,
  reads `1d`. That is one day *in this step*, not one day of total work; its
  work item age keeps counting from the original start.
- **A card that skipped a column** never had a day in it. Days in state
  describe the step the card is in now, not the path it took.

Hover the counter: the tooltip restates the definition, so nobody has to have
read this page to interpret the number.

## Turning on the aging view

Open the **⋯** menu in the board header and choose **Aging colors**. The menu
offers it while the counter is on, and the entry says beside its name what it
does to your rules: *Pauses your card color rules*. While the mode is on, cards
are tinted by how unusual their age is, and your own card color rules stand down
for the duration, because the highlight uses the same tint your rules do, so the
two never compete for one card and what you are looking at is unambiguous. Turn
it off and your rules come straight back. The colored strip down the left of a
card is not involved: that always means the work item type.

**Nothing moves.** The order of cards in a column is your order, and the mode
does not touch it. Age is a color here, never a position.

What a card is compared with depends on what the board can measure, and the
history comes from the Analytics service. A column with enough history of its
own compares its cards with how long finished work has spent in that step, and
prints `p50` and `p85` under its name. Every other column compares each card
with the work of the board's own types closed in the last 90 days, or over 12
months when that quarter holds fewer than ten closed items.
[Read the board by age at the daily meeting](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/read-the-board-by-age/)
walks through reading those colors.

### When there is too little history

If Analytics cannot be read, or too few items have closed to compare against,
the line above the columns says so and the board marks the card that has sat
**longest in each column** instead. That mark is deliberately narrow: *this one
has been here longest*. It is a comparison with the cards in that column **right
now**, not with the column's history and not with any target. The exact number
is on the card already, in the counter; the color only points.

That narrowness explains three things people ask about:

- **A column with one card marks nothing.** There was no comparison to make.
- **A column where every card is the same age marks nothing.** No card has sat
  longest; picking one would mean choosing by position, which this view never
  does.
- **Two cards tied at the top are both marked.** A shared answer is still an
  answer.

If a column is showing only its first page, the longest-sitting card may be
behind **Show more**, and until it is on screen that column marks nothing rather
than promoting the oldest card you happen to be looking at.

## If your team has agreed a limit

By default the view needs no number from you, and that is the point: most teams
do not know their own numbers, which is why flow metrics exist at all.

If yours *has* agreed one, say "a step should not take more than five days", put
it in **Settings → Cards → Fields**, under *Highlight cards at this many days
or more*. The box sits directly under *Show time in current state*, the switch
it qualifies. The view then marks every card at or over it, instead of
comparing cards with measured history or with each other, and the line above
the columns says the limit is in force.

That is a different statement, and a stronger one: it says *these have broken
the promise we made*, so marking several cards is right rather than noisy. It
also says something in a column where everything is equally and badly old,
where the "longest" mark is honestly silent.

Two things to expect. The limit applies to every column, including your last
one, so cards that have simply been finished for a while will be marked; if
your last column means "ready to deploy" that is exactly what you want, and if
it means "archived" you may prefer no limit. And the number is **your promise,
not a measurement**. The product will never invent one for you. While a limit
is set, it takes the place of the measured comparison on this board. Clear it
to have **Aging colors** compare cards with what your process actually does,
rather than what you hoped it would, as described in
[Read the board by age at the daily meeting](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/read-the-board-by-age/).

The box is always visible, never behind an expander: a board that behaves
unusually should say so on the way in, and the surest way to manage that is to
leave the setting on screen.

## When there is no counter

If the board's work item type does not carry the `State Change Date` field,
which is possible on old on-premises XML process models, the board says so in a
message bar and shows no counters, rather than showing badges with nothing in
them. Every hosted process has the field on every type.

## Related

- [Spot items nobody has touched in a week](https://anykanban.com/docs/shape-the-board/spot-untouched-items/): a styling
  rule on *Changed Date*, which is a different clock: it resets on **any**
  edit, not only a state change.
- [Choose what each card shows](https://anykanban.com/docs/shape-the-board/choose-what-a-card-shows/)