Here’s how it happens. You sketch a plan. It’s airtight, bulletproof, a Swiss watch of efficiency. You will do A and B. Maybe, just maybe, if the stars align and the traffic lights are all green, you’ll do C.

Then reality happens. You do A. You do B. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a little voice whispers, Hey, I can still squeeze in C. You reach for it. Stretch. Overextend. And then—whoops. You don’t just fail C. You fail at failing. Maybe the whole structure collapses. Maybe it doesn’t, but you still walk away feeling like a samurai who just fumbled his own ritual suicide.

Because here’s the trick: You did everything you planned. But because you thought you could do more, the entire thing now feels like a debacle. This is seppuku scheduling, where the crime isn’t failure—it’s failing to be superhuman.

It’s the productivity version of a gambler’s fallacy. You keep doubling down on your own success until one misstep wipes out the whole session. You don’t judge yourself by what you actually did, but by what you could have done. The modern calendar is an altar to infinite possibility, and when you fall short of that imaginary ideal, you kneel before it, knife in hand.

You could fix this, of course. You could build in margins. You could plan more like a human and less like an algorithm. But where’s the thrill in that? Where’s the samurai drama?

Instead, you’ll do what you always do. Make another airtight plan. Convince yourself that this time you’ll get to C. And when you don’t, you’ll shake your head and mutter about how it all went wrong.

Seppuku Scheduling and the Birth of the Tech VC

And now, instead of taking the hit like a rational adult, you do what every Silicon Valley demigod does: you outsource the blame.

You tell yourself, I did everything right, but the world failed me. A phrase forms in your head—half rationalization, half gospel: This system is broken. If only there were better tools. Smarter automation. A way to bend reality to your schedule.

Congratulations. You’re now on the path to becoming a venture capitalist.

This is how it always starts. First, you fail to execute your own airtight plan. Then, instead of adjusting your expectations like a reasonable person, you decide the universe itself needs disruption.

That missed deadline? Clearly, the productivity software industry is lagging behind.

That botched rollout? Obviously, someone should have invented a better AI assistant.

That time your genius wasn’t fully recognized? The market must be inefficient.

So you do what any self-respecting seppuku scheduler does: you start throwing money at people who promise to fix it.

And that’s how you get Silicon Valley’s unique strain of messianic delusion—the kind that believes failure isn’t a lesson, but an injustice. The kind that funds ten different versions of the same app, all promising to free you from the cruel tyranny of clocks. The kind that genuinely believes “time management” is just a series of unexploited arbitrage opportunities.

None of this makes you better at managing your own life, of course. But it does buy you the illusion that failure isn’t personal—it’s systemic. And once you believe that? Well, you’ll never have to take responsibility for missing C ever again.