Issue #94c • 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. Prioritization isn't finding a way to keep everything. It's accepting there's more worth having, worth doing, worth trying, than time allows, and deciding on purpose what you're willing to let go, especially the almost-right things.

Why it matters. The obviously wrong things are easy to release. The almost-right hire, the almost-right partnership, the almost-right plan, these drain you longest, because they're good enough to justify keeping and never quite good enough to be the answer. Every seat given to an almost-right thing is a seat not available to something better, whether you name that trade-off or not. Missing out isn't a risk to eliminate. It's the actual cost of choosing anything, and it's what makes the thing you keep worth keeping.

How to practice it.

• List your almost-right things: the projects, hires, or plans that are fine but not the answer.
• For each one, ask what it's costing you to keep it, not in failures, but in the seat it's occupying.
• Release one this week, on purpose, and notice that the discomfort is the cost, not a sign you're wrong.

What's the almost-right thing you're still holding onto, the one that's good enough to keep but not good enough to be the answer?

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

Mathias Ihlenfeld | Entrepreneur | Coach | Advisor

P.S. This closes the three-part series. 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.

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