Throwing Away Six Months
Inspired by Brandon Chu episode
Brandon Chu killed a feature after 6 months. Not because it failed - wrong problem. Sunk cost fallacy kills products and bedtimes alike.
Brandon Chu spent six months building a feature at Shopify. Beautiful code. Almost done. Solving the wrong problem. He deleted it. Six months of work, gone.
Sunk cost fallacy. The past is spent. The question isn't "how much have we invested?" It's "what should we do from here?"
You've been doing an elaborate bedtime routine for five months. Fifteen books, four songs, lying on the floor next to their bed until your leg goes numb and you army-crawl out like you're escaping a crime scene. Ninety minutes. It's not working. They still wake up three times a night.
But five months of investment! You can't just stop now. Except you can. Those five months are gone either way. The question is: do you want to do this for five MORE months because you already did it for five?
That's not commitment. That's being too tired to pivot. The bedtime routine isn't a product roadmap. You're allowed to kill features that don't work, even if you built them with your whole heart.
