The Killing Spree

Scott Belsky discovered something counterintuitive at Behance: every time they removed a feature, the core metric went UP. "So actually if you make the whole product about one thing, everyone does that. That core crank operates at 10X the velocity."

He calls it a "killing spree" - systematically removing things to see what actually matters.

What if you applied this to family rules? What if half your rules are actually distracting from the ones that matter?

"We used to have this ability to change the colors of your portfolio," Scott explains. "We took it away. For 24 hours, we had people reaching out to us being like, 'Damn you.' After that 24 hours, we basically never heard about it again."

Sound familiar? The rule about no toys at the table. The elaborate bedtime sequence. The thing you enforce out of habit more than conviction. What happens if you just... stop?

Maybe the screaming lasts 24 hours. Maybe after that, everyone forgets it existed. And now you have one less thing to police at the exact moment you're too tired to police anything.