Finally, the principle scales from individuals to organizations. Peter Drucker urged leaders to ask what activities should be stopped, not just started; Jim Collins’s Good to Great (2001) formalized this as a “stop-doing list.” Lean manufacturing’s focus on eliminating waste (Taiichi Ohno, 1988) echoes the same logic: subtraction reveals flow. In modern knowledge work, canceling a recurring meeting or discontinuing status reports can unlock blocks of uninterrupted time; Cal Newport’s Deep Work (2016) shows that such protected focus accelerates high-value output. Thus, clearing one habitual practice—personal or institutional—creates room for the future to arrive, not by accident, but by design. [...]
