Issue #94a • September 5th, 2026

This piece expands on one of the ideas from "The Tool You're Waiting For Doesn't Exist." If you haven't read that one yet, it's worth starting there.

The skill. Most advice trains you to get better at doing more. The Anti-Skill is the opposite: staying with one hard thing, a decision, a conversation, a choice, while dozens of other legitimate things sit completely untouched, without treating that as failure. The poet Keats called something close to this negative capability, the capacity to tolerate what's unresolved instead of reaching for premature closure just to relieve the discomfort.

Why it matters. If you're avoiding one real decision behind a wall of busywork right now, the busywork isn't the problem. The avoidance is, wearing busywork as its disguise. Staying busy lets you feel like you're making progress while you stand still on the one thing that actually matters.

How to practice it.

• Name the one real thing you're avoiding, specifically, not the category.
• Let everything else on your list stay unfinished, on purpose, without checking on it to relieve your own discomfort.
• Before opening any tool or app today, ask: is this helping me face the real thing, or helping me avoid it?

What's the one thing you're avoiding right now that's hiding behind everything else on your list? Name it. That's the whole exercise for today.

If this landed, hit reply. I read them all.

Mathias Ihlenfeld | Entrepreneur | Coach | Advisor

P.S. Part two, "Cut It Off," is about what happens once you stop avoiding it. This is also the exact territory I work through with founders in Birthing of Giants. The next cohort starts October 15, capped at 16 seats.

​LinkedIn • Instagram • Website​

You're receiving this because you subscribed to by Mathias.