Every rule I add to my setup has to kill an old one

Last week I caught myself about to add yet another rule to a setup that already has hundreds. My own system stopped me.

My deal is small. To add one thing, I remove something. Grow the value, never the pile. Add and subtract together, or do not add at all.

You already know this in your gut. Open your editor extensions. Your notes app. Your shell config. That folder of scripts you swore you would clean up someday. Count what you actually touched this month. It is a sliver of what is installed. Everything else is weight you carry and call a system.

I hoard by default. I built hundreds of rules and hooks because each one felt important the day I wrote it. And each one was, that day. Then the next important thing showed up, and the next, and the old ones never left. A setup that only grows quietly turns into a landfill with good intentions.

So I made the constraint mechanical. Now when I add a rule, the setup asks me what comes out. This week I added a few. To land them, I retired older ones that had stopped earning their place. The total barely moved. That was the whole point.

Here is the uncomfortable part. Anyone can add. The rare skill is deleting. Setups drown in their own additions, and neglect is hardly ever the killer. Every new decision pays a tax to the things you kept around in case they mattered later. The sharp setup belongs to whoever kept cutting until only the load-bearing pieces were left.

It stings the first few times. You spent real effort on the thing you are removing. But a rule you no longer follow is a quiet lie about how you actually work, and deleting it is telling the truth.

Four weeks in, something odd happened. It got smaller and did more. I can finally see every piece still standing.

Your turn

What is one tool or rule you keep but never actually use?

If this was useful

I work through this in public, the wins and the freezes both, mostly on LinkedIn and YouTube. If the real version of building in the open is useful to you, that is where it lives. Find me on X, GitHub, and the work at next8n.com.