Why does portfolio rebalancing fail?

The most common reason portfolio rebalancing fails: Treating all agents as equally important and never retiring any of them. This is portfolio drift — the cognitive equivalent of letting your investment allocations wander unchecked. You'll know you're in this failure mode when you feel vaguely overwhelmed by your own systems but can't name which ones are actually producing value. The symptom is system fatigue without system performance.

The fix: List every active cognitive agent you maintain — every recurring process, checklist, decision framework, or structured routine you run regularly. For each one, score two things on a 1-to-5 scale: (1) how often it actually fires in a typical week, and (2) how much its output changes your behavior when it does fire. Multiply the scores. Anything scoring below 6 is a rebalancing candidate: either retire it, merge it with another agent, or redesign it to increase behavioral impact. Anything scoring above 15 is a candidate for investment — consider splitting it into more specialized variants or increasing its trigger frequency.

The underlying principle is straightforward: Periodically review and rebalance your agent portfolio — retire underperformers, invest in high-value agents.