The Portfolio Pie

Allocate 100 points across the outcomes that must coexist to expose what one salient goal is consuming.

A product launch has swallowed your entire work life. Research, mentoring your junior hire, improving the systems that make next quarter easier, all of it has quietly gone to zero while launch tasks consume every hour. Nobody decided this. One salient goal simply ate the whole system, even though several outcomes have to coexist for the job to actually work.

The Portfolio Pie makes the consumption visible. The cue: one vivid goal is absorbing everything while other necessary outcomes starve. The move: allocate 100 points across the outcomes that matter, say, launch execution, customer research, mentoring, and system improvement, first as they should be, then as your last two weeks actually were. Mark any minimum slice (mentoring never drops below 10) and any maximum concentration (no single goal above 60). Then use the picture to expose the tradeoff and negotiate it deliberately, not to mechanically settle it. What changes: an invisible takeover becomes a chart you can argue with, and starving priorities get floors. The boundary the spec draws: weights are conversation tools, never proof that dignity, consent, or truth can be traded away for enough points somewhere else.