Ship-or-Kill Checklist

Run this every Friday for each active project. No skipping, no "I'll do it next week." Friday afternoon, before you close the laptop.

The 5 Questions

1. Did I ship anything this week?

Not "worked on." Shipped. Pushed to production, published, sent to a real person. If the answer is "I made progress but nothing went live," that's a no. Progress without shipping is motion. Motion kills projects slowly.

2. Did anyone who isn't me interact with it?

A user, a customer, a beta tester, a friend who actually tried it. Not "I posted about it and got likes." Someone used the thing. How long has it been since someone external touched this project? If the answer is "never" or "I don't remember," you're building in a vacuum.

3. Am I solving a different problem than I started with?

Scope creep is how projects die. You started building a task manager. Now it's a full project management suite with team collaboration and Gantt charts. You started building a habit tracker. Now it's a "life operating system." Each feature felt logical in the moment. Together, they buried the original idea.

4. If I had to ship the current version tomorrow, could I?

Not perfect. Not polished. Could I put it in front of someone and it works? If yes, why haven't you? What exactly are you waiting for? Write down the answer. If the answer is anything other than a critical bug, you're stalling.

5. Do I actually care, or am I avoiding something harder?

Some projects exist because the alternative is scarier. Building a SaaS because cold outreach is uncomfortable. Starting a podcast because writing a book is harder. Redesigning your portfolio instead of applying to jobs. Be honest about what this project is protecting you from.

The Rule

If a project fails Questions 1 and 2 for 3 consecutive weeks, kill it. Not "pause." Not "put on the backburner." Kill it. Archive the repo. Take down the domain. Move on.

Zombie projects eat creative energy. They sit in your project list, not dead enough to delete, not alive enough to ship. Every time you see them, you feel a little guilt. That guilt adds up. It makes you less likely to start something new because you "should finish" the old thing first.

Kill the zombies. Free the energy. Start something that passes all 5 questions.