Judge Your Progress By What You’re Doing Less Of, Not More

Photo by Jess @ Harper Sunday on Unsplash

Here’s a counterintuitive thought for you — instead of judging your progress by what you now do, judge it by what you no longer do.

Success is about doing less, better.

The common thinking is that, in order to get better, you need to do more things than you don’t currently do. Sometimes that means creating new habits on top of the ones you already have, getting additional education, or adding more things to your plate so you can feel or be seen as more “busy” or productive.

But that doesn’t jibe, because success is about doing less, better.

Successful people will tell you that they now say “no” to things they used to say “yes” to. Saying no to things is the first step on the path to success. That doesn’t mean you don’t say yes to some things; of course you say yes to some things. But, you are quite intentional and deliberate about what you now say yes to, and you still say no to more things than ever before.

Saying yes to things can mean you have new and more experiences, but it also means you have less time, less energy, and less focus. If we all have a certain amount of time and energy to spend, and you are not careful about what you’re saying yes to, you may end up wasting much of that time and energy on things that either don’t get you any…