The most useful sentence in any planning meeting.

Demonstrated below, in real time. Total elapsed: three minutes and seventeen seconds.

Minutes · item 4 of 9 re: a bug in the export function

The item is: the export button fails on large files.

While someone is in there, the exporter should really be rebuilt properly.

Honestly, the whole pipeline is overdue.

If the pipeline is being rebuilt anyway, this is a platform.

Platforms have ecosystems.

This could be the standard.

The future, basically. All of it. Starting now and continuing forever

someone, quietly:

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Nobody argues. There is nothing to argue with.

The item is: the export button fails on large files.

Assigned · estimated · due Tuesday

Item 5 of 9.

Try it on your own sentence

Paste the message you were about to send — the pivot, the rebuild, the platform. Nothing leaves this page; there is no server, no account, no log. It only reads the words back to you, slowly.

What six words actually do

i · It is not a no

The sentence kills nothing. The platform, the ecosystem, the standard: all of it remains exactly as possible as it was a minute ago. It simply has to wait its turn behind a bug fix. That is not a demotion. Every large thing that has ever actually existed got there by standing in that line, one Tuesday at a time.

ii · It is plural on purpose

You are getting ahead of yourself starts an argument. Ourselves is a confession: everyone in the room was enjoying the ride, including whoever says it. The sentence corrects the room without electing a loser, which is precisely why the room accepts it.

iii · It ends the fun part

Which is why it is said so rarely. Imagining the ecosystem costs nothing and feels like progress. The sentence trades the feeling of progress for the real thing, and the real thing is smaller, slower, and due Tuesday. This trade is always worth making and never feels like it.

Try it yourself

The roadmap machine

Every press of the button is another quarter of ambition. Watch the second number.

  1. Q1Fix the export button.

Quarters planned: 1 · Shipped: 0

A word from the other sponsor™

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. THE PARADIGM HAS SHIFTED. IN FIVE YEARS YOU WON’T RECOGNIZE—

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

—THE TOTAL ADDRESSABLE MARKET IS EVERY HUMAN ALIVE—

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

—WE’RE NOT A COMPANY, WE’RE A MOVEMENT—

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One sentence, three uses, still working.

We are not saying nothing changes everything. Twice a century, something does. That is the base rate; plan accordingly.