How to pick what you’ll deliberately give up to gain focus
At a tech startup, senior engineer Maya juggled code reviews, Slack threads, side projects, and endless documentation. She felt busy but never finished her main initiative: a new user-onboarding tool. Recognizing the burnout, she did a quick audit, listing everything she did each day and marking “green” for progress tasks and “red” for distractions.
She discovered she spent almost two hours daily in optional stand-ups and design chats that didn’t serve her primary goal. Maya decided to bomb those times—she politely declined non-essential meetings and set specific blocks in her calendar for deep work. Instead of jumping from message to message, she scheduled “no-meeting” windows each afternoon.
Within two weeks, she delivered a working prototype. Leadership noticed and praised her clarity of focus. By ditching three non-critical activities, Maya gained back ten hours a week to finish her core project. Her success shows how strategic incompetence—intentionally not doing something—can free you to finish what matters.
Examine your day, label three time drains to drop, then reclaim that time for your main goal. Let team members know when you’re unavailable, block deep-work sessions, and simplify less important tasks. Soon, you’ll have the breathing room to actually finish what you set out to do.
What You'll Achieve
Free up time and mental energy by eliminating non-essential tasks, enabling deeper focus and faster goal completion.
Choose three bombs to drop
List your current time drains
Spend five minutes writing down tasks or apps you use daily that don’t push you closer to your goal.
Label each red or green
Mark tasks that help (green) or hinder (red) progress; be honest—they may feel useful but really distract.
Select three reds to drop or simplify
Choose what you’ll stop doing—social media scrolling, random errands, or unnecessary meetings—and decide exactly when you’ll quit them.
Announce your plan
Tell a friend or calendar-block the time you’ll reclaim so you stay committed to your new focus zone.
Reflection Questions
- Which tasks feel urgent but don’t really matter?
- How will you feel sharing your plan to skip those tasks?
- What will you finally do with the reclaimed time?
Personalization Tips
- A parent skips binge-watching in favor of reading one chapter of a parenting book.
- A software engineer stops checking developer forums at midday and uses that hour for focused coding sprints.
- A student puts away TikTok during study sessions and instead listens to instrumental music for concentration.
Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done
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