--- title: Don't Accomplish Everything | daily.dev description: Kent Beck shares a personal story from his early days at Facebook where accomplishing only half his goals earned him an 'exceeds expectations' review. He uses... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-accomplish-everything-4bgsbhjrw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Don't Accomplish Everything | daily.dev og:description: Kent Beck shares a personal story from his early days at Facebook where accomplishing only half his goals earned him an 'exceeds expectations' review. He uses... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-accomplish-everything-4bgsbhjrw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/4BGsbHJrw.png og:image:alt: Don't Accomplish Everything og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Don't Accomplish Everything **[Software Design: Tidy First?](https://daily.dev/sources/tidyfirst)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Kent Beck shares a personal story from his early days at Facebook where accomplishing only half his goals earned him an 'exceeds expectations' review. He uses this to explain the 3X framework (Explore/Expand/Extract) and the concept of P50 goals — setting targets where achieving roughly 50% is considered on-track. In exploratory phases, completing all goals signals either sandbagging or a failure to learn. Beck argues that the software industry has shifted from Extract (stable, dependency-heavy, KPI-driven) to Explore mode, requiring a fundamental rethink of how goals, dependencies, and performance are managed. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Canon 3X: Explore/Expand/Extract](https://daily.dev/posts/canon-3x-explore-expand-extract-3kgdtdsf0) · Software Design: Tidy First? · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Explore \*Then\* Expand \*Then\* Extract](https://daily.dev/posts/explore-then-expand-then-extract-9zskqbkks) · Software Design: Tidy First? · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#company-culture](https://daily.dev/tags/company-culture) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-accomplish-everything-4bgsbhjrw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Don't Accomplish Everything","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-accomplish-everything-4bgsbhjrw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-accomplish-everything-4bgsbhjrw"},"datePublished":"2026-02-23T14:30:43.725Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T14:31:04.995Z","description":"Kent Beck shares a personal story from his early days at Facebook where accomplishing only half his goals earned him an 'exceeds expectations' review. 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