Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A user equipment (UE) may perform, during at least a portion of a sensing window, a sensing process to identify a quantity of resources of a sidelink channel that are available for transmission by the UE during a selection window. The UE may terminate the sensing process before expiry of the sensing window based on the quantity of resources satisfying an early termination threshold. The UE may then transmit, during the selection window, a set of data over the sidelink channel using the quantity of resources.