Stop doing to start succeeding by practicing creative procrastination

A coach once noticed his evenings were vanishing. He “quick-checked” news sites after dinner, then drifted to videos until his tea was cold. Mornings felt heavy and creative work slid to the edges. One night he asked a blunt question he often gave clients: “If I weren’t doing this already, would I start today?” The answer was obvious. He wrote a stop-doing list with three items and taped it to his laptop.

He built guardrails. A single app blocked news after 8 p.m. He batched admin once a week and delegated tasks a junior colleague could handle 80% as well. The first week, he reclaimed six hours. He funneled them into a long-stalled course outline. The second week, he trimmed another two by declining a low-yield partnership call, using a simple script he had drafted in advance.

The shift wasn’t dramatic from the outside, but it was solid. He started the day clearer, with fewer mental tabs open. He ate dinner with his family without glancing at his phone, and when it buzzed from the counter, he let it buzz. Progress on the course became its own reward. Small eliminations created big momentum.

This is creative procrastination: consciously choosing what not to do so you can do what matters. Zero-based thinking cuts sunk-cost loyalty to habits that don’t serve you. No-scripts remove the emotional friction of declining. Delegation and batching minimize context switching. Tracking reclaimed hours reinforces the payoff, turning “less” into “more” you can see.

Pick one area to run zero-based thinking on tonight and mark anything you wouldn’t start again for elimination, delegation, or delay. Write three short, polite no-scripts so you can decline quickly, then decide which low-value tasks you can hand off or batch into a weekly window. Start a tally of hours you reclaim and pour them into one high-impact goal so the trade-offs are visible. Try it for seven days and watch what expands when you stop doing the right things.