Strategic Portfolio Review

The quarterly debugging session where you find out what's actually running and what's just sitting there.

WorkflowWorkflow~10 min|5 checkpoints

By the end of this module

✓Audited energy mix and confirmed at least one COMPOUNDING project

✓Resolved every PARKED idea older than 60 days (restart, archive, or accept park)

✓Closed every overdue decision with a verdict

✓Reached zero High-priority recommendations

✓Logged a Decision summarizing the quarter's findings and next-quarter changes

When and Why

Run this quarterly. Also run it any time you sense you've lost the plot, busy without progress, three new projects in a month, multiple high-priority alerts ignored.

The strategic portfolio review is debugging your operating system. The weekly review keeps you on track tactically. This review keeps you on track strategically, it catches the drift that doesn't show up in any single week but is unmistakable across 12.

Budget 60-90 minutes. Treat it like a quarterly board meeting where you're both the founder and the board. Take notes. End with a logged Decision summarizing what changed.

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Insight:Most founders 'mean to' do a quarterly review and never quite get around to it. The cost compounds: a quarter of unresolved drift is much harder to fix than four months of clean operation. Calendar it now.

Step 1. Portfolio Audit (15 min)

Open Focus and answer:

Over capacity? (Is OVERLOAD_ALERT firing?)

Is the energy mix healthy, or have you drifted to mostly DRAINING/MAINTENANCE?

Is there a declared Focus Lane, and does it still belong at Layer 2?

Then open Projects. For each ACTIVE project, answer three questions:

1. Did you work on this in the last 14 days? (No = candidate for park.)
2. Will you work on it in the next 14? (No = candidate for archive.)
3. If you closed it today, what would you regret? (Nothing = candidate for archive.)

Be uncomfortably honest. The "I should work on this" feeling is not evidence of activity, it's evidence of guilt about inactivity.

Step 2. Parked Idea Sweep (15 min)

Open Vault, filter to PARKED. For each parked idea older than 60 days:

Has anything changed that makes this relevant now? → restart triage, set IN_TRIAGE.

Has time made it obvious this won't happen? → archive.

Still genuinely "maybe later"? → leave parked, but reset the revisit window.

The REVISIT_PARKED recommendation fires for ideas 60+ days old with score ≥60. Treat the alert as the trigger for this entire step.

The trap: park is not a graceful way to avoid the archive decision. If you've been "meaning to come back to it" for 6 months, you're not coming back. Archive without ceremony.

Step 3. Decision Log Sweep (20 min)

Open Decisions, filter REVISIT_PENDING. For each overdue:

1. Read the original context. Don't rush, the value is in re-engaging past-you's thinking.
2. Record a verdict: VALIDATED, PROVED_WRONG, SUPERSEDED, STILL_ACTIVE.
3. Write an outcome note. Even one sentence is fine; the act of writing is what compounds.

Then scan ACTIVE decisions:

Any that contradict a more recent decision? Mark the old one SUPERSEDED, link the replacement via REPLACES.

Any with revisit dates so far out they'll never trigger? Bring them in to a reasonable horizon.

If you have Pro, run AI Pattern Detection during this step. It catches decision patterns you can't see manually, reversal cycles, repeated framing errors, decisions you keep re-making in different clothes.

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Tip:A clean decision log is the closest thing a founder has to institutional memory. The quarterly sweep is what keeps it clean. Skip the sweep and the log degrades to a junk drawer.

Step 4. Clear All Recommendations (15 min)

Open Recommendations. Resolve, don't dismiss. For each High-priority alert:

OVERLOAD_ALERT: Park or archive until you're under your max.

CAPACITY_WARNING: Reclassify energy types if you've miscalled them, or close a draining project.

OVERDUE_REVIEW: Should already be done in Step 3. If any remain, finish them.

STALE_CAPTURES: Triage session. If the queue is enormous, bulk-park anything older than 60 days that you haven't touched.

For Mediums:

STALLED_TRIAGE: Finish or revert to RAW.

REVISIT_PARKED: Done in Step 2.

CONVERT_TO_ASSET: Either convert or archive the flagged ideas. Don't let them rot.

End state: zero High alerts, ≤2 Mediums. If you can't reach that, you haven't actually addressed the underlying drift.

Step 5. Log the Quarter (5 min)

Create a Decision with the title Q[N] portfolio review and the following body:

`
What I found:

What I'm changing for next quarter:

What I'm watching:

Set the revisit date to the end of next quarter. Now you have a permanent record. The single biggest reason founders re-make the same mistakes quarter after quarter is that they never logged the diagnosis the first time.

Practice Checkpoints

Audited energy mix and confirmed at least one COMPOUNDING project

Resolved every PARKED idea older than 60 days (restart, archive, or accept park)

Closed every overdue decision with a verdict

Reached zero High-priority recommendations

Logged a Decision summarizing the quarter's findings and next-quarter changes

Next in Foundations Path

How It All Connects

Trace how a single thought becomes strategy through every Foundry surface

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