Formally retire at least one commitment every quarter…

When This Fires

• During every quarterly review as a mandatory agenda item
• When your commitment portfolio has only grown over the past year
• When you feel overextended despite not having taken on anything obviously excessive recently
• Complements Three consecutive months on the "didn't get to" list =… (zombie goal elimination) at the quarterly strategic level and One-in-one-out for option sets — adding a new option… (one-in-one-out) as the macro-level pruning

Common Failure Mode

"Nothing is ready to retire": every commitment seems important from the inside. The forcing function works precisely because it overrides this perception: at least one commitment must go, even if all feel important. The one that produces the least value relative to its time and energy cost is the candidate.

The Protocol

(1) During quarterly review, list all active commitments: projects, roles, memberships, regular activities, ongoing obligations. (2) For each, ask Drucker's question: "If I weren't already doing this, would I start it today knowing what I now know?" (3) Identify the commitment(s) where the answer is most clearly "no." (4) Formally retire at least one: communicate your exit to relevant parties, complete any closure tasks, and remove it from your active portfolio. (5) Note the capacity freed. This capacity is now available for new commitments aligned with current priorities (Block recovered time for priority work immediately… — block the recovered time immediately). (6) If retiring a commitment feels impossible because of obligations: this is the commitment most in need of retirement, not the one most deserving of preservation. Obligations are the mechanism through which outdated commitments survive.