Vijay Iyengar
Add Activities When Thriving, Remove When Drowning
Inspired by Vijay Iyengar episode
Vijay Iyengar's product line strategy: expand when stable, contract when overwhelmed. Same with kids' swimming lessons and music class.
Vijay Iyengar on product line strategy: when things are going well, expand. When you're drowning, contract. Only maintain what you can actually support.
Your kid's doing swimming, music class, playgroup, and gymnastics. You signed up for all of it in September when everyone was healthy and optimistic and you had this beautiful Google Calendar that color-coded your entire life.
Then October hits. Someone gets pink eye. Work launches a thing. The baby stops sleeping. And you're still driving to gymnastics at 4 PM on a Tuesday like you're honoring a treaty with a foreign government.
You don't have to keep doing this. Dropping music class isn't failure, it's product strategy. Complexity requires energy. You don't have energy. Cut complexity. Swimming can come back in January. Right now? Contract to what you can actually support. Which is apparently getting everyone to bedtime alive.
It's not retreat. It's resource allocation.
