Techniques
The Pre-Mortem
Imagine failure before launch. Work backwards to find risks before they find you.
The Five Whys
Keep asking why until you hit root cause. Symptoms are not solutions.
The Decision Journal
Record reasoning before outcomes. Review to calibrate your judgment.
The Weekly Audit
Scheduled subtraction. Protected time to kill things that shouldn't exist.
The Handoff Protocol
Transfer tacit knowledge, not just documentation. What the manual won't tell you.
The Bias Check
Structured prompts to surface your blind spots. See what you're not seeing.
The Minimum Viable Test
The cheapest experiment that could disprove your assumption. Fail fast, fail cheap.
The Async Default
Meetings as exception, not rule. Default to asynchronous unless synchronous is essential.
Recipes
Meeting Purge
Audit your calendar. Delete the meetings that shouldn't exist.
⏱ 1 hour
Project Kill
End a project cleanly. Extract the lessons before you bury it.
⏱ 1 day
Scope Razor
Cut a project down to what actually matters. Ship the essential.
⏱ 2 hours
Process Audit
Find the steps in your workflow that add no value. Then remove them.
⏱ 30 minutes
Decision Memo
Document a decision so well that no meeting is needed.
⏱ 20 minutes
The No Template
A template for saying no. Professional, clear, final.
⏱ 5 minutes
Tech Debt Triage
Sort your technical debt. Fix what matters, delete what doesn't.
⏱ Half day
Inbox Zero Reset
Declare bankruptcy. Start fresh. Build the habits that keep it clean.
⏱ 1 hour