The Serenity Prayer and the Discard Bucket
Two rituals for perfectionists: the Serenity Prayer, and a bucket you cannot un-bin
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 90%
Loktev's answer to the observation that succeeding in hyper-growth is mostly psychological, not skill-based. Two deliberately physical tools: a handwritten Serenity Prayer re-read every other day to separate what you control from what you don't, and a literal bucket — you write the thing you cannot fix on paper, crumple it, throw it away, and are forbidden from taking it back out.
Origin
The Serenity Prayer is a widely-known prayer commonly attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and popularised by twelve-step recovery programs; Loktev adopted it as a daily operating tool. The discard bucket is his own invention, used personally and extended into one-on-ones with his direct reports at Airbnb.
Core principles
- 01Impact at hyper-scale is mostly about day-to-day regulation of your own mind, not core skills.
- 02It is easy to get lost in the sea of projects, priorities and opinions — and to dwell on dependencies you cannot move.
- 03Perfectionists (which most PMs are) have a hard time letting go, and need a mechanism, not willpower.
- 04The discard must be irreversible: once it is in the bucket, it does not come back out.
- 05Letting go publicly, with your team, is liberating rather than defeatist.
How to run it
- 1
Write the Serenity Prayer by hand
Write it out on paper and on post-it notes: grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Keep it visible.
Pro tip The handwriting and physical placement matter — Loktev deliberately made it a physical object, not a note in an app.
- 2
Re-read it every other day
Use it as a scheduled step back from the day-to-day: it re-contextualises what is actually important and what is genuinely in your control today.
- 3
Name the thing you must let go of
Write on a piece of paper the specific thing that is not going well — a dependency, a project, a meeting you know will be frustrating, or a decision that went against something you felt deeply about.
Pro tip Being specific matters. 'Getting this person to join the company' is a discardable item; 'hiring is hard' is not.
- 4
Crumple it and bin it — irreversibly
Physically crumple the paper and throw it into the bucket (Loktev used whatever trash can was in the meeting room). The rule is absolute: once something is in the bucket, you cannot take it back out and you do not dwell on it.
Watch out The rule is the whole framework. If you allow yourself to retrieve items, it becomes a procrastination list rather than a release.
- 5
Make it a team ritual
Open one-on-ones with a frustrated report by asking: what are we throwing in the bucket? It converts a venting session into a shared, liberating act of letting go.
- 6
Rebalance the person, not just the workload
When even this is not enough — burnout, identity fusion with the job — deliberately spend less time on work: reconnect with lost friends, family, and hobbies. Loktev found he became more effective, not less, because every remaining hour carried more impact.
Pro tip Find joy in little things again; without it you cannot show up with the open mind and curiosity the job requires.
Watch out Loktev hit rock bottom around 2018 having lost friends, relationships and hobbies to Airbnb — the discard bucket is a prevention tool, not a cure for that state.
In the wild
Loktev spent a very long time trying to hire someone he believed would be a phenomenal addition to the team. He tried and tried and failed. At some point the pursuit became counterproductive.
→ He wrote it down — this is not going to happen, I have to move on — crumpled it, and threw it in the bucket. He stopped dwelling and redirected the energy.
Loktev could tell when a PM reporting to him was frustrated with how things were going. Rather than problem-solving, one of his first questions would be: what are we throwing in the bucket?
→ He describes it as a very liberating thing to do — it gave the report explicit permission to stop carrying what they could not change.
Common mistakes
Treating the psychological work as optional
Loktev is explicit that a lot of being impactful at a hyper-growth company is not core skills — it is day-to-day regulation of your mind. People who skip this dwell on dependencies and lose the ability to act.
Taking things back out of the bucket
The irreversibility rule is what makes it work. A reversible discard is just a deferral, and the item continues to consume attention exactly as before.
Is it for you?
Best for
Perfectionist operators and PMs at hyper-growth companies who cannot stop carrying things they have no power to change.
Not ideal for
Situations where the thing bothering you is actually within your control — the framework only applies after you have honestly established that it is not.
From the transcript
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to…”
“I'm a perfectionist. Like I just deeply care about many different things and I I have a hard time letting go.”
“it was just a reminder that I need to let some things go and focus on the things that matter”
From the episode
Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product)