I am not sure if I am missing something, since many people have made this comment, but isn't this in some ways similar to the shape of the traditional definition of back pressure, and not "entirely different"? A downstream consumer can't make its work through the queue of work to be done, so it pushes work back upstream - to you.
Yeah it's too bad the author chose that word. They are in to something though, is a useful way to think about this game.