When a project stalls, most people push harder — more hours, more pressure, more will. The Jain philosopher Umasvati had a different theory: activity itself generates karma, a kind of accumulated residue that clogs clear judgment the longer you force action without pause. His remedy wasn't effort. It was nirjarā — deliberate shedding, the practice of letting accumulated weight fall away before moving forward. What makes this strange is that organizational psychologist Karl Weick independently arrived at something adjacent: his studies of high-reliability teams showed that the most effective leaders regularly 'drop their tools' — literally and figuratively — resisting the momentum of a plan when circumstances change. Both traditions are pointing at the same costly mistake: mistaking accumulated momentum for progress. The practical move is simpler than it sounds. Before your next major push, ask what you're carrying into it that belongs to last week's version of the problem, not this one.

What assumption are you still acting on that you haven't actually tested since you formed it?

Drawing from Jain Philosophy combined with Organizational Psychology — Umasvati (Tattvarthasutra, c. 2nd–5th century CE) and Karl Weick (dropping tools research, 'Making Sense of the Organization', 2001)