#growth Every time you get advice, someone is going to tell you what to do. In fact, I'm about to do it right now. _Before you start doing anything new, stop something you're doing now._ Being told to do more and more and more things is incredibly frustrating stressful. It's just not possible to do all the things people tell you are important to do. So before you do any new thing, you have to decide what thing you're doing now that you're going to stop doing. Creating a "stop doing" list is actually more productive than creating a "to do" list. It's impossible to finish your todo list if you don't stop doing the other things that have been preventing you from doing the things on your todo list in the first place. And that turns out to be the key: when you consciously decide to not do a thing, it opens up time and energy to do something else. It's that simple. But we all like to ignore the things that we _won't_ do because someone has told us those things are important, and we have to do all the important things! ... but not really. Decide what you're willing to stop doing, then decide what you're willing to start doing. In that order. Your life, your productivity, your happiness, and your mental health will all skyrocket as you reprioritize and decide you're going to stop doing things that are less important.