Simplify

When a part of your setup costs more upkeep than it gives back, delete it instead of trying to fix it.

Your knee finally healed, so you built a comeback system. A running watch, a spreadsheet where you log every mile and how the knee felt, a weekly mobility video, a sleep-tracking ring, and a physical therapist check-in every third week. Nine months later you are running fine. You are also spending Sunday nights copying watch numbers into cells nobody reads, and the ring's sleep score has never once changed what you did the next morning.

Simplify is deleting a piece outright rather than moving it, rewiring it, or handing it to someone else. The cue is a part you can honestly say has not changed a single decision in months, or whose upkeep you feel as a chore. Do three things. Name the piece and ask what result it produces that nothing else produces. If the answer is nothing, remove it and keep it removed for four weeks. Then check whether the result you feared losing actually got worse. Here you drop the spreadsheet and the ring and keep the watch and the therapist. What changes is that the setup gets smaller by two parts and gives back your Sunday, with no loss in the running. This is the wrong move when a part is quiet precisely because it is working, like a smoke alarm or a backup, where the whole value sits in covering a rare failure.