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💡 The Big Idea: Subtraction Beats Addition.

As 2025 comes to a close, it's natural to reflect on the year and set intentions for what changes you're going to make.

Most people set intentions like, "I'm going to lose 15 pounds," "I'm going to write my book," or "I'm going to finally start my side hustle."

It's human nature to think that if we just did something additional, then our situation would change for the better.

So at the beginning of the year, when people are making their New Year's resolutions, they're usually focused on doing something extra.

Which is why statistically 92% of these resolutions will fail.

You can't just keep adding things. If you really want to make positive change in your life, you need to start removing things.

Which means you need to start saying "no."

It may seem counterintuitive, but if you want to do more of what really matters, you actually need to do less.

Less of everything else that doesn't hit the mark.

Less of what other people say you should do.

Without first doing less, you'll never find the margin you need to make real progress.

What Should I STOP Doing?

Every quarter, I do a Personal Retreat where I get away to reflect on the previous quarter and plan the next one.

During my Personal Retreat, I ask myself 3 questions:

• What should I START doing?
• What should I KEEP doing?
• What should I STOP doing?

Every quarter, I pick at least one thing to stop doing. I tend to get excited about new opportunities, but forcing myself to let go of at least one previous commitment every 90 days gives me a systematic way to build some margin into my life.

For example, last quarter I started saying “no” to additional freelance work. While the extra cash was nice, the side work was stealing more time from working on my YouTube channel than I was comfortable with.

It wasn't a choice between doing the work or not doing the work. It was a choice between doing freelance work or building my channel, and the freelance work was actually preventing me from publishing a video every week.

Which was frustrating because I had identified publishing weekly on YouTube as the most important thing for that quarter!

We don’t often view our commitments as either/or decisions. But we probably should.

What I've learned after years of doing this is that past decisions have future consequences.

Often I find I continue to do things because I don't want to let anyone else down. I'm a recovering people pleaser, and there's "commitment momentum" there that is hard for me to break.

The way I do this is to ask myself, "if I were making a decision about this NOW, would I still say yes to this?"

Just because it was the right thing for me in the past doesn't mean it's the right thing for me in the present. It can be difficult to say "no" because we don't want to let people down, but an uncomfortable conversation is much better than another year of regret.

A Few Yeses But a Million Nos

James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) says it this way:

The true cost of every "yes" is far great than we realize. Even if we don't think something will take that long, not doing it is always faster.

So from a productivity perspective, "no" is usually a better answer.

No is a decision. It's also a complete sentence (you don't have to give a reason). But yes is a commitment. And it's commitment that future you will probably come to resent if it's not aligned with your vision your and values.

Every commitment you make by saying "yes" steals time and energy from future you. Each "yes" restricts your options and can lead you down default paths that you don't really want to travel down.

And if you aren’t extremely careful, it’s easy for your commitments to outpace your capacity.

So as you head into 2026, don't write checks that future you can't cash.

Be careful of what (and who) you say yes to.

Remember: if you want to do more of what really matters, sometimes saying “No” is the ultimate productivity hack.

— Mike