What You Will Stop Doing

The list only grows

A service added for one customer, a platform set up during a quiet month, a report nobody reads, a subscription bought for a project that ended.

Each was a reasonable decision at the time and none has ever been revisited.

So a business that feels short of time is frequently carrying six things that would not be started today.

The annual subtraction is the exercise nobody schedules, and it produces more capacity than any improvement to how you work.

The test

One question, applied to everything you currently do.

Knowing what you know now, would you start this today.

Not whether it is going badly, and not whether it can be justified, but whether you would choose it from a clean start.

Anything where the honest answer is no is a candidate, regardless of how long it has been running.

That question cuts through the sunk cost more reliably than any assessment of whether something is working.

Ask it of services, tools, platforms, reports, meetings, and customers.

Where the candidates usually are

• A service added for one customer.
• A platform nobody has posted on since spring.
• A report produced and not read.
• A subscription for a finished project.
• A customer who costs more than they pay.
• A commitment made to somebody who has left.

The first is the most common. A business ends up offering something outside its core work because one good customer asked, and three years later it is on the website, occupying attention and producing almost nothing.

Choose two, not everything

Since the failure mode here is an ambitious list that produces no action.

Two things stopped is a real change and is achievable in January.

Six things stopped is a plan that will not survive the first week back.

Choose by the amount of attention consumed rather than by cost, since the thing that occupies your thinking is more expensive than the thing that costs money.

And prefer the one you have been avoiding deciding about, because that avoidance is itself a cost that has been running all year.

A worked example

A business listed everything it did and applied the question.

Four things failed it: a service offered for one customer who had since left, two social accounts nobody had posted to since March, a monthly report produced for nobody, and a subscription for a tool replaced in 2021.

They chose the service and the report, since those consumed attention rather than money.

Removing the service from the website took ten minutes and the report stopped by simply not being produced, which nobody noticed for four months.

The two social accounts were left as they were and reconsidered the following year.

The recovered time went into the one improvement they had chosen for January.

Stopping properly

Since a thing left ambiguous continues.

Name the date it ends rather than letting it fade, because a service you have quietly stopped promoting is still being enquired about.

Tell whoever is affected, briefly and in advance, and offer an alternative where you have one.

Remove it from the website, the listing, and anywhere else it appears, since the page outlives the decision.

Cancel the subscriptions rather than intending to, and check the notice period, which is what turns an intention into a payment.

And write down that it is stopped, so it does not quietly resume in March because somebody asked.

The customer version is the hard one

Worth addressing separately, since it is where the largest gains usually sit.

Most businesses have one or two customers who consume disproportionate time, pay late, or make the work unpleasant.

Ending that is uncomfortable and is frequently the highest-return decision available.

The gentler version is a price that reflects the actual cost, which either fixes the arithmetic or ends it without a conversation.

Where you do end it, do so cleanly and without explanation beyond capacity, and hand over properly.

Businesses that do this almost always report afterwards that they should have done it a year earlier.

Notice what you stopped by accident

Which is useful information about what mattered.

Look at what quietly lapsed this year without anybody deciding: a newsletter that stopped, a report nobody produced, a channel that went quiet.

If nothing bad happened, that is a decision made for you and worth confirming rather than restarting out of guilt.

Where something was missed, that tells you it mattered and should be reinstated deliberately.

Either way it is information, and January is when people restart things out of enthusiasm rather than judgement.

Say what you will not add

The other half, and it is what keeps the list from regrowing by March.

Decide in advance the kinds of thing you will decline this year: work outside your trade, another platform, a customer below a certain size.

Those decisions are easy now and difficult in the moment, when somebody pleasant is asking and the work is in front of you.

Write them as a short rule rather than an intention, since a rule can be applied by anybody and an intention gets reconsidered each time.

Stopping two things and adding four is a busier year with the same problem, which is what happens without this half.

The counter-case

Stopping has costs.

Some things take longer to pay off than a year, and a business that abandons anything without immediate return will never build anything that compounds.

Withdrawing a service can also cost a customer relationship that was worth more than the service itself.

And the question is easy to apply harshly to the parts of a business that are quietly holding it together.

Apply the test, choose two, name the date, and tell the people affected.

The exercise

1. List everything you currently do.
2. Ask whether you would start it today.
3. Choose two, by attention consumed.
4. Name the date each ends.
5. Tell whoever is affected.
6. Remove it from the website and listings.
7. Check what lapsed by accident this year.

Step three is what makes this happen at all, since a list of six things to stop is the same as a list of none.

The seasonal version of this is covered in what to stop doing in December.

Frequently asked questions

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