The feature I killed last week.

For a few weeks I had been sketching a full notes workspace inside Franz. Not a sticky-notes toy: real documents, meeting transcription, deep todo integration, sync with Notion and Todoist. I could see the whole thing. I wanted it. I had already started building.

Then I stopped, and shelved all of it.

Not because I could not build it. Building it was the easy part. I stopped because I looked at it honestly and asked what you actually need from Franz right now. The honest answer was not a second Notion. It was the thing you already open every day, working better: faster, calmer, fewer rough edges. So that is where the time is going instead. Stability, and hardening Franz Mail. Not a shiny new tab.

That decision felt bad for about a day. Killing something you are excited about always does. But it is the same lesson I keep relearning, and the one productivity idea I would actually stand behind: the most valuable work I do is usually not what I build. It is what I decide not to.

Around 80% of what I have ever tried on Franz never shipped. Saying no to the other things is quietly the most important work there is.

If you want the longer version of that argument, I wrote it up on my personal blog: why judgment beats building.

A trick worth stealing: Franz holds any website.

Most people think of Franz as the big-name messengers. But it is not limited to the services in the list. If there is a web app you live in that Franz does not have a ready-made tile for, you can add it yourself in a few seconds, and it lives in your sidebar like everything else.

That is the whole trick. Paste a link, and Franz keeps it for you.

What is one thing you are deliberately not doing right now?

A feature, a side project, a habit, something you are choosing to skip because focus matters more. Just hit reply and tell me. One line is plenty. Every answer lands in my own inbox, and I read and reply to all of them myself. And I will gather the answers and share a few that stick with me in a future dispatch, so you get a glimpse of what others are choosing to skip too.

The cable is always open. Reply to any dispatch, about anything, and you are writing straight to me.

— Stefan, founder of Franz