Want to Be More Productive? Try Doing Less.

If we want to ramp up our productivity and happiness at home and at work, we should actually be doing less. But that’s incredibly difficult as you’re balancing work, parenting, friendships, and more. When you stop doing the things that make you feel busy but aren’t getting you results, then you end up with more than enough time for what matters.

You can follow a simple exercise to help decide what activities on your to-do list brings you the most value, and which you can stop doing. Decide on an area of your life where you’d like to have better results and less stress. Write down the tasks you do in that area on one side of a piece of paper, and on the other, list successes you’ve had in that area. Then, identify which tasks directly contributed to those successes. Anything that didn’t directly contribute can be eliminated, greatly reduced, or delegated to someone else.