How I Got More Done When I Started Doing Less

For a long time, I thought productivity was about adding. More hours. More lists. More apps to help me organize the chaos I willingly walk into each week. I wore my busy like a badge and convinced myself it meant I was winning.

Spoiler: I wasn’t.

What I didn’t realize back then is that productivity isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters. And that shift—one I didn’t choose so much as stumble into—changed everything.

It started with burnout. Not the dramatic kind that knocks you flat, but the quieter kind that creeps in through small compromises. I was still checking boxes, still showing up, still moving. But I wasn’t actually progressing. My energy was shot. My mind felt like a browser with too many tabs open. And for all my effort, I didn’t feel any closer to the life I actually wanted.

So I stopped. Not everything. Just enough to hear myself think again.

I paused long enough to ask myself a question I hadn’t considered in a while: What’s really essential here? Not what’s expected. Not what looks good on paper. Just: what actually moves the needle in my work, my relationships, my well-being?

And then I did something wild. I started saying no. A lot.

No to the meetings I didn’t need to be in.
No to the pressure to fill every block of time with “value.”
No to the false urgency that made everything feel like a fire drill.

In the space that “no” created, something unexpected happened: I started getting more done. But not just more tasks—I mean more of the right things. The ideas I’d been sitting on finally got air. My conversations got deeper. I had energy again. Focus, even. And the kicker? Nobody noticed the things I stopped doing. Not really. Turns out, a lot of what felt urgent wasn’t essential at all.

Here’s the thing no one tells you: doing less isn’t lazy. It’s strategic. It’s a way of respecting your time and your capacity. It’s how you protect the part of yourself that’s creative, thoughtful, and resourceful—the part that gets drowned out in the noise of nonstop output.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now, I won’t tell you to drop everything. But I will say this: take five minutes today to look at your to-do list and ask, “What can I let go of?” And more importantly, “What would I love to have room for?”

That’s where the magic is.