Killing a three-month project was my best decision this year.

Last week, I killed a project my team had been building for three months.

上周，我亲手归档了一个做了三个月的项目。

The team exploded. “We put in all that time — why stop now?”

团队炸锅了——“明明花了这么多时间，为什么砍掉？”

Because I finally saw something clearly. When the direction is wrong, effort is just a more expensive way to lose.

因为我终于看清了一个事实：方向错了，再努力也只是在浪费。

We had been trying to fit an AI assistant into a very small chip. It sounded cool — the kind of thing you could show off. But when we actually measured the power consumption, the picture changed. What our users really needed was “long battery life and reliability.” What we were building was “high power draw and raw cleverness.”

我们之前想在一颗很小的芯片上塞一个 AI 助手。听起来很酷，对吧？但当我们认真算了功耗之后发现：用户最需要的是”省电、耐用”，而我们在做的恰恰是”费电、炫技”。

This is what I now call scene mismatch. The technology itself is not wrong. It is simply in the wrong place. It is like using a cannon to swat a mosquito — neither the cannon nor the mosquito is to blame. The choice is what is wrong.

这是典型的”场景错位”——技术本身没问题，但放错了地方。就像用大炮打蚊子，大炮没错，蚊子也没错，错的是你的选择。

After we cut it, we switched to a simpler approach. Power dropped 40%. The experience got better, not worse.

砍掉之后，我们换了一种更轻量的方案。功耗降了 40%，用户体验反而更好了。

One lesson from this: subtraction is harder than addition, but often more valuable.

从那以后我学会了一件事：做减法比做加法更难，但往往更值钱。

Is there something you have held on to for too long — something you already know you should let go of?

你手上有没有那种”坚持了很久，但内心知道该放手”的事？