Buffett’s 25-5 Rule

In 2013, Warren Buffett was talking with his personal pilot, Mike Flint. Flint had been flying him around for a decade and was wrestling with career direction.

Buffett gave him an exercise. Write down your top 25 career goals. Then circle the 5 most important.

Flint did it. Buffett asked him about the other 20.

Flint said something reasonable. He'd focus on the top 5, but work on the other 20 whenever he had time.

Buffett stopped him. "No. You've got it wrong. Everything you didn't circle just became your avoid at all costs list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you've succeeded with your top 5."

The pilot does what we all do. We have a list of goals or tasks that are too long too be achieved but we consider success when anything on the list can be “chipped away” at over time.

The Hard Part

Most of us think about focus as an addition problem. What should I prioritize? What's the next thing to build, hire, launch, write?

That framing is comfortable because it never forces a real decision. You can keep adding priorities forever. The list grows. The week fills. Something always gets done.

But focus isn't an addition problem. It's a subtraction problem.

Every yes is a silent no to something else. The trouble is the silent no's never get said out loud, so they never get chosen. They just happen, slowly, in the form of half-finished initiatives, neglected customers, untouched playbooks, and the vague feeling that you're busy but not moving.

The right question isn't what should I focus on this quarter? You already know what to focus on.

The harder question is: What am I willing to let fail today?

Not "deprioritize." Not "park." Not "circle back to." Fail. Drop. Die.

If you can't name what you're letting fail, you're not focused. You're just optimistic.

And there's a reason we never name the orphans on our goal list.

The False Ledger

Here's why our orphans survive.

When you spend an hour pushing forward something on your someday list, your brain books it as a productive hour. You did work. The day feels like it counted.

What doesn't get booked is the hour you didn't spend on the thing that actually matters. That hour leaves no trace. There's no half-finished output to show, no inbox cleared, no Slack message sent. The cost is invisible, so it never makes the ledger.

This is why founders and business owners end so many days feeling busy but empty. The ledger says you were productive but your business hasn’t moved forward.

The trap is that orphans pay you in small, immediate hits of accomplishment. The priority pays you in slow, delayed progress that often doesn't feel like anything for weeks. Your brain, given the choice, will reach for the orphan every time. Not because you're undisciplined. Because the reward schedule is rigged against you.

The exercise that follows is partly about choosing what to let fail. But it's also about closing the false ledger. You must price in the hours you're losing on the things you didn't do, not just counting the hours you spent on the things you did.

The Framework: Letting Go in Three Steps

1. Name the Orphans

Open your calendar from the last two weeks. Look at every meeting, project, and recurring commitment.

Now sort them honestly into three buckets:

• Loved — things you've actively pushed forward.

• Tolerated — things you've kept alive on life support.

• Orphaned — things you keep meaning to get to.

The orphans are where most founders lose. They aren't failing visibly. A lapsed content cadence. A hiring process you started but didn't finish. A partnership conversation that's been "next week" for two months. A reporting dashboard half-built.

Each orphan is consuming something. Even if you're not working on it, it's taking up real estate in your head and a slot on your list. It's a tax you're paying without getting the service.

Write them down. All of them. Don't sanitize. The list should make you slightly uncomfortable. Like every time I move, I’m personally embarrassed by how much stuff I never got rid of. Our goals and to-do list accumulate similar clutter.

2. Pick the Failures

Now go through the orphan list and tolerated list. For each item, choose one of three outcomes:

• Resurrect — assign a real owner (if not yourself), real deadline, real resources. If you can't, it doesn't qualify.

• Kill — actively shut it down. Tell anyone affected. Close the loop.

• Let fail — accept that it won't get done. Don't pretend otherwise. Remove it.

The third option is the one we skip. They'll resurrect or kill, but they won't sit with "this won't happen and I'm okay with that." It feels like admitting defeat.

It isn't. Defeat is what happens when you don't choose, and reality chooses for you. Letting something fail on purpose means you've cut the cost and reclaimed the attention.

A useful test: would you rather have this thing done badly, or have the time and focus you'd spend on it? If the answer is the time, let it fail.

3. Defend the Line

Picking failures is the easy part. Holding the line is the work.

Two weeks after you pick, something will pull you back. A client will ask about the thing you killed. A team member will surface the partnership you let go. Your own brain will start whispering that maybe it wasn't that hard to keep doing.

This is the moment focus actually gets tested. Not when you write the list. When the list gets attacked.

Write down why you let each thing fail. One sentence is enough and future-you will need it. Telling someone helps. The decisions you announce are harder to quietly reverse. Then re-run the exercise quarterly. Anything you add back has to earn its way in by displacing something else.

The goal isn't a clean to-do list. It's a defended one.

The Next Step

Focus is usually framed as a positive choice. Pick what matters. Go all in. Compound on your strengths.

That's only half the discipline. The other half is naming, out loud, what you're not doing and being honest enough to call it failure rather than dressing it up as patience.

This week, try the exercise. List your top 25. Circle 5. Then look hard at the other 20 and ask which ones you're going to let fail.

If the list makes you a little uncomfortable, you've done it right.

My goal with The Leap is to provide you each Saturday with the knowledge, tools and lessons learned to help you get started and keep going toward building your future. 

Whether you are making the leap to startups, solo-entrepreneurship, freelancing, side hustles or other creative ventures, the tools and strategies to succeed in each are similar.