Time to Grow by Letting Go: Why My 2026 Resolution Fits on a Post-it Note

My resolution for 2026 is absurdly simple. It fits on a Post-it note. One word: UNTANGLE.

That's it. No vision board. No quarterly OKRs. No five-year strategic plan with color-coded milestones.

Just one word that represents the most counterintuitive thing I've learned after years of building, optimizing, and scaling: sometimes the path forward requires tearing everything down.

The Trap of Winning

Here's how I got here: 80 containers. A thousand optimizations. Endless subscriptions stacking up on my credit card statement like badges of honor. Every "yes" felt like winning. Every new system made perfect sense in isolation.

This tool would save me three hours a week. That automation would eliminate manual work. This integration would connect two previously disconnected workflows. Each decision was rational. Each addition was justified.

And now? I'm drowning in my own infrastructure.

The irony isn't lost on me. I spent years building systems to create freedom, and instead built a prison that requires constant maintenance. My mornings start with checking if the automation pipelines are running. My evenings end troubleshooting why Container 47 isn't talking to Container 48.

I became the system administrator of my own life.

The Real Source of Complexity

Here's what nobody tells you about optimization: Complexity isn't the systems you build. It's the dependencies they create.

That's the brutal truth that took me too long to understand.

Each tool connects to three others. Each automation requires five inputs. Each "streamlined" process creates ten points of potential failure. You think you're building efficiency, but you're actually building a house of cards that demands your constant attention.

The chaos of this past year taught me something I should have known all along: your 47-step morning routine doesn't matter when life throws you a curveball. Your color-coded calendar becomes completely irrelevant when an actual crisis hits. Your optimized workflows? They're not working for you anymore. They're managing you now.

You've become the servant to the systems that were supposed to serve you.

The Easy Part (That Wasn't Easy to Admit)

I started with the obvious target: subscriptions. I killed $6K worth of them. Gone. Canceled. Dead.

That was the easy part, honestly. The software didn't fight back. It didn't send me guilt-inducing emails. It didn't make me question my identity. I just clicked "cancel subscription" forty-seven times and reclaimed six thousand dollars a year.

But here's what made it hard: admitting I wasted that money in the first place. Acknowledging that all those "essential" tools were solving problems I'd invented. Facing the reality that I was seduced by the promise of optimization without doing the math on the actual return.

Every canceled subscription was a tiny admission of failure. A recognition that I'd been fooled—not by the software companies, but by myself.

The Identity Tax

The truly hard part? That's just beginning.

It's admitting I can't do it all. Breaking commitments that still work but don't serve where I'm going. Firing the identity of the guy who handles everything, who's always available, who never says no.

That guy got me here. But he's going to kill me if I let him stick around.

Derek Sivers nailed it years ago: a simple life isn't easier upfront. It's actually harder. You have to say no when yes would be simpler. You have to disappoint people who've come to expect your constant availability. You have to let profitable things die because profitable isn't the same as purposeful.

This is the tax nobody mentions. The identity tax.

For years, I've been "the guy who can figure it out." The person people call when they need something done. The one with the answer, the tool, the workflow, the hack. That identity felt good. It felt valuable. It felt like winning.

But identities are shells. And sometimes you outgrow them.

The Hermit Crab Principle

The hermit crab doesn't shed its shell because it's broken. It sheds because staying means dying.

The shell that protected you at one size becomes a constraint at the next. What kept you safe becomes what keeps you stuck. Growth requires vulnerability—the terrifying period between shells when you're exposed and searching for what fits.

I'm in that vulnerable period now. I've started shedding, but I haven't found the new shell yet. And that's okay. Maybe the point isn't finding a new shell immediately. Maybe the point is being uncomfortable long enough to remember what you actually need versus what you've been carrying out of habit.

What Untangling Actually Looks Like

So 2026 is my shedding year. Here's what that means in practice:

The "maybe someday" projects? Dead. Not hibernating. Not "on the backburner." Dead. If it's not a "hell yes," it's a "hell no."

The gray area obligations? Gone. You know the ones—the committees you joined out of obligation, the recurring meetings that lost their purpose three years ago, the projects you stay involved with because leaving would be awkward.

The phone stays off when it matters. Not on silent. Not on Do Not Disturb. Off. Because the world will survive without my immediate response, and I won't survive without deep, uninterrupted focus.

Fewer things, deeper focus. Fewer dependencies, more sovereignty. Fewer optimizations, more intention.

What Remains

What remains after all this untangling won't be optimized. It won't impress anyone with its complexity. It won't generate great screenshots for productivity Twitter.

But it'll be mine.

Fully mine. Not borrowed from someone else's system. Not copied from a productivity guru's framework. Not assembled from fifty different tools and templates and hacks.

Mine. Simple. Defensible. Sustainable.

The Freedom in Dependencies

Here's the final piece: Every dependency you cut is freedom you reclaim. Every thread you untangle is space to breathe.

This isn't minimalism for aesthetic purposes. This isn't decluttering to post before-and-after photos. This is survival. This is recognizing that the most dangerous complexity isn't technical—it's personal.

It's the accumulated weight of a thousand reasonable decisions that collectively became unreasonable. It's the slow suffocation of having too many threads to manage, too many systems to maintain, too many identities to perform.

Untangling is how you find yourself again underneath all the infrastructure you built on top of yourself.