Man, I was drowning. Absolutely sinking in the details of this side project we were running. It wasn’t even the work itself, it was the atmosphere. Too many cooks trying to be nice, everyone whispering suggestions, nobody wanting to tell the hard truth. You know that feeling? When everyone is being “supportive” but the actual forward momentum has ground to a halt?
I realized quick that I was running this thing with too much heart and not enough head. Every decision was bogged down by anticipating feelings, worried about stepping on toes, or making sure the vibe was good. The vibe was fantastic, but the deliverables were non-existent. We had missed three self-imposed deadlines, and the main partner was starting to get that tight look around the eyes.
I remembered reading about the Queen of Swords years ago—not as some spooky tarot reading, but as an operational archetype. Pure, unfeeling clarity. Cutting through the bullshit with surgical precision. I needed that energy, and I needed it yesterday. So I stopped everything, shut down the collaborative chat, and documented my own emergency protocol. I named it the ‘Cold Logic Pivot.’ This wasn’t theoretical; this was me trying to save my own ass by acting like a completely different person for 48 hours.
The Pivot Point: Instituting the Cold Logic Protocol
The first thing I did was physically isolate myself. I booked a small windowless office downtown for a day. No phones, no distractions, just me, the whiteboard, and three months of project notes. I needed to see the facts naked, without the fuzzy filter of ‘team morale.’ That’s where the 5 steps came from. They are not gentle. They are designed to hurt feelings and deliver results.
Here’s how I implemented the process, step by step:
- Step 1: Strip the Emotion, Identify the Core Lie.
I started by going through every single meeting summary and discussion thread. Every single one. I wasn’t looking for good ideas; I was looking for the assumption we were all clinging to that wasn’t true. We had all agreed the product needed to be “user-friendly and comprehensive.” The core lie? We didn’t have the manpower or budget for “comprehensive.” I literally wrote on the board in huge letters: WE ARE NOT COMPREHENSIVE. WE ARE FAST. Just admitting that felt like taking a breath of icy air. I had to strip away the hopeful narrative we were telling ourselves.
- Step 2: Demand the Data and Trash the Anecdotes.
The Queen doesn’t care about what feels right. She cares about what is right. I immediately sent out a blunt, non-negotiable email to the three main contributors. I didn’t ask how they felt or what they thought was best. I asked for only one thing: hard metrics showing where time and money were actually going. I got back three different spreadsheets, none of which matched. My job then became a pure audit. I cross-referenced the numbers until I found the single most inefficient bottleneck—it was a feature we were building “just in case” someone might need it. Nobody had the guts to say cut it. I didn’t ask. I just marked it as DECOMMISSIONED.
- Step 3: Draw the Line in Concrete.
This is where the boundary setting happens. The project was messy because the scope kept creeping. We kept saying “yes” because saying “no” felt rude. I needed a clear, non-negotiable definition of success that could be written on a note card. I boiled the entire mission down to a single sentence: “Launch the MVP with 3 core features by Friday.” Anything that didn’t directly serve that sentence was immediately tossed into the “Phase Two: Maybe” pile. I didn’t care who developed it or how proud they were of it. If it didn’t fit, it was out. It felt brutal, like taking a machete to a garden. But damn, it was effective.
- Step 4: Communicate the Decision, Not the Rationale.
I walked back into the office the next day and called a 15-minute meeting. Not 30, not 45. Fifteen. I used the Queen of Swords communication style: clear, sharp, and focused purely on the outcome. I didn’t apologize for the cuts. I didn’t explain my feelings or their feelings. I simply stated the new, non-negotiable plan, presented the simplified scope, and assigned the tasks based on the new priorities. When one guy started asking, “But what about the user experience flow we mapped out last week?” I stopped him cold. “That is currently irrelevant. Focus on deployment metrics. Next question.” Zero tolerance for drift.
- Step 5: Maintain the Distance and Let the Dust Settle.
The immediate fallout was exactly what you’d expect. A couple of people were clearly hurt. One person went radio silent for an hour. But here’s the thing about the Queen’s energy: it’s efficient. Because the decision was based purely on logic (we need to launch or we fail), the emotional pushback had nowhere to stick. I kept my emotional distance, answered questions purely factually, and treated the entire situation as an urgent, technical problem, not an interpersonal one. Within 24 hours, the team snapped to attention because the path was finally clear. We hit the deadline, by the way. Barely, but we hit it.
This whole practice showed me something crucial. Sometimes, being the good guy, being supportive, or being flexible is the fastest way to fail. The Queen of Swords teaches you that sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for a project—or even for yourself—is to grab the sharpest intellectual tool you have and make the clean, undeniable cut. It’s cold, yes, but man, does it bring clarity.
