Sacrifice
Destroy something you truly value, with no stand-in; if it cost you nothing, it was not this.
Ma: the room cleared of the beautiful furniture, not the junk.
Seen in Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953
Try it on your work
Choose one thing you have made and value, and give it up irreversibly (give it away, dismantle it for parts, let it go) in the name of one named thing it was blocking. Begin the unblocked thing the same day; otherwise it was waste, not sacrifice.
Retire, permanently and explicitly, one phrase or claim your project has leaned on: say it aloud one last time, then ban it, declaring the ban to someone who'll notice violations. What you have to say instead is the growth.
Cancel one commitment that is genuinely good in order to make one better thing possible, on the record, with the reason attached. If nothing improved within a cycle, log that too; sacrifice has a failure mode and it should be visible.
How it has been used
Destroy something of value to enable something else: the composer cutting the best melody because it belongs to a different piece, the chess exchange, the burning of the boats. The move forbids substitutes: sacrificing something you didn't value is disposal, not sacrifice.
Where it leads
Grouped under Take something away