Sabri Suby's subtraction method for protecting time and focus

Executive overview

Most productivity advice adds complexity — new apps, habits, systems. Sabri Suby, founder of King Kong, does the opposite: he removes everything that doesn't directly move the needle.

The core tool is the King's audit: track every hour for a week, calculate your hourly value, then cut or delegate anything below that rate. Applied ruthlessly to both work and personal life, it creates space for deep work — the only work that actually scales a business.

Focus is achieved through subtraction, not addition.

The King's audit

• Track every hour worked for a full week
• Divide annual profit by hours worked to find your hourly rate
• Cut or delegate any task worth less than that rate
• Apply to personal life too: cleaning, cooking, lawn care, errands
• Repeat annually — tasks creep back in, especially ones tied to identity
• The hardest cuts are things you enjoy but that aren't highest leverage

Meeting structure and the fixer role

• Meetings confined to Mondays and Fridays only; deep work days kept clear
• Default meeting length: 15 minutes — forces compression
• Before any meeting request reaches Sabri, his "fixer" (not "assistant") filters it
• Most meeting requests are eliminated at the fixer stage; a Loom video or voice note replaces them
• The fixer's mandate: defend time like a bouncer — "the barbarians are at the gate"
• Setting up the filtering framework takes 2–3 hours; the payoff is ongoing

Deep work routine

• Office days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday; home days: Tuesday, Thursday
• Day planned the afternoon before at 4pm — never wakes up deciding what to work on
• Three priority tasks identified each day
• Work begins 5–6am; sprint to ~11:30am with one break
• One song on repeat while working — removes micro-decisions about music
• No carbs until evening: avoids energy crashes during deep work
• Post-meal walk aids digestion and maintains consistent energy
• Afternoon: emails, voice notes, shallow work
• Phone on airplane mode; all distractions removed during sprints

Annual goal-setting and prioritisation

• Write a full list of goals, then identify the single goal that would make the others irrelevant
• Ask: what level of input would make it unreasonable not to hit that goal?
• Break that input requirement down to quarter, month, week, day
• Review quarterly — if not on track directionally, no magic catch-up exists
• Two goals maximum for the year; one primary focus

Handling shiny object syndrome (SOS)

• Entrepreneurs gravitate to new things because novelty drives dopamine — not because it scales
• Most businesses fail from doing too many things, not too few
• Anchor decisions to what won't change: find the equivalent of Amazon's "cheapest price, widest selection"
• Wait for something to materially disrupt the business before pivoting attention to it
• The dream day exercise: describe a specific ideal day in detail, then reverse-engineer the income and work required to make it real
• Use the dream day as a filter: does this opportunity get me closer to that day, or distract from it?

Defaulting to no

• "Yes" is the path of least resistance; most people avoid confrontation
• Prioritisation literally means cutting off alternatives
• A quick no is better than a slow no
• When unsure: assess the probability the opportunity moves you toward your goal vs. completing known high-leverage tasks
• 50% information is enough to decide — waiting for certainty is a stall
• With enough reps, the right answer becomes intuitive