How to decide what not to do
Systems for narrowing your focus
A tragedy of life is that we often achieve nothing in pursuit of everything. One of the most overlooked yet crucial steps in achieving ambitious long-term goals is clearly defining what you will not do.
In my 20s, I had many competing goals. I wanted to watch the top 100 movies on IMDb, read prominent Russian novels, run a 16-minute 5k, squat 150kg, increase my vertical jump to dunk a basketball, and learn to code in R. All of these goals were important to me, yet, tragically, I never accomplished any of them. This was largely because I tried to achieve them all simultaneously. My energy and attention was divided in too many directions.
Over time, I've learned that doing less can paradoxically lead to accomplishing more. Although my goals are different from those in my twenties, I now far more reliably accomplish my ambitions. This is largely because I've developed the wisdom not to try to do it all (at least, not all at once).
I understand that for an ambitious person, this is easier said than done. Deciding not to pursue a meaningful goal can be extremely difficult. When maintaining multiple goals at once, we get a sense of satisfaction imagining ourselves achieving all of our ambitions. Narrowing your focus is hard because it requires admitting that you will not realize certain dreams—it means giving up on them.
Systematically deciding what not to pursue
If you've read the first article on clarifying what's important, you'll have a list of broad ambitions aligned with your values. To realize those ambitions, you need to turn them into specific goals with an execution plan. The third article in this series covers how to do that in more detail: "How to Set Achievable Goals - Systems for Refining Your Goals." However, before moving toward the detailed planning steps, it's worth narrowing your focus to a short list of goals.
If you intentionally and systematically determine what you will not pursue, you can feel more at peace with it. You are far less likely to slip into expanding your focus and diluting your efforts. Doing this requires determining which goals are most meaningful, aligned with your values, and achievable with your available resources.
Quantify values alignment to eliminate goals
Chances are some of your broad goals or ambitions are more meaningful and better aligned with your values than others. You might intuitively feel which ones those are, but it's worth making it explicit. You can do that by scoring each goal against the four dimensions list below.
Alignment with values
On a scale of 1 to 5, to what extent does this goal reflect my core values or themes?
(1 = Not aligned, 5 = Fully aligned)
Impact on ideal life
On a scale of 1 to 5, how significantly will achieving this goal contribute to my vision of an ideal life?
(1 = Minimal impact, 5 = Transformative impact)
Durability and commitment
On a scale of 1 to 5, how confident am I in staying committed to this goal for the long term?
(1 = Not confident, 5 = Highly confident)
Excitement and passion
On a scale of 1 to 5, how much excitement and passion do I feel toward working on this goal?
(1 = Not motivated, 5 = Highly motivated)
After rating each of your candidate goals using these questions, you can sum up the scores to surface goals that are least aligned with your values and exciting to pursue. Making a conscious effort not to pursue those goals will give you the focus required to make progress on the remaining goals. From there, you must determine if you have the resources to achieve your remaining goals.
Identifying your finite resources
To make meaningful progress on long-term goals, you have to ensure that you have enough resources to sustain your efforts for long enough to see real results. Sometimes, you don’t make progress on a goal because you simply don’t have enough hours in the day. Other times, you don’t have enough energy to sustain effort or money to support your efforts.
These are the most common resources that you can exhaust in pursuit of a goal:
Time: The hard limit of how many hours in a day you can dedicate to working on a goal.
Physical energy: Your bodily stamina which can be depleted by physical exertion, lack of sleep, or poor health habits.
Emotional energy: The emotional resilience you need to manage setbacks and criticism, as well as maintain your motivation in the face of challenges.
Cognitive energy: The mental effort required for planning, making decisions, and intense intellectual work.
Money: The financial resources available to dedicate to your personal goals.
Support from others: The emotional and logistical backing you need from a partner or loved one to work on your goals.
Estimating the impact of goals on your finite resources
After identifying your finite resources, you can estimate how much working on each goal would deplete those resources. Doing this requires a rough understanding of the specific actions you need to take each day or week to progress your goal. For example, if your goal is to run a marathon, you need to run about 7 hours a week, get a few basic supplies, and ensure you are getting 8 hours of sleep every night. Alternatively, if your goal is to learn a second language, you need a weekly routine of 2-3 hours of self-study, 1-2 tutor sessions a week, and a trip to immerse yourself in the language for an extended period of time.
Once you've roughly mapped out what you would need to do for each of your goals, you can rate them against each of your finite resources. For the goal of running a marathon, this would look like this:
Time: 7 hours per week running, 2 hours per week on recovery activities
70% of my weekly leisure time
Physical energy: I'd likely exhaust most of my physical energy five days a week running
80% of my physical energy
Emotional energy: Running doesn't require much emotional effort, but the occasional setbacks due to injury can get me down a little
20% of my emotional energy
Cognitive energy: Hard physical training actually restores my cognitive energy; it's a nice break from thinking tasks
0% of my cognitive energy
Money: Some basic running equipment, like shoes and a running vest, as well as the marathon entry fee, might cost me $500 over six months
10% of my discretionary spending budget
Support from others: Disappearing for 7 hours per week running and then coming home exhausted does put a small tax on my wife—if I were to pick up a second equally demanding goal, that would be pushing it too far.
70% of my wife's tolerance
You can complete an analysis like this for each of your potential goals. I've created this Google sheet to guide you through this. You can list your goals and complete the cells in the table to estimate their impact on your finite resources.
Once you've done this, select different combinations of goals to see the overall impact on your finite resources. When you exceed 100% on one resource, that's an indication that you probably can’t sustain your efforts long enough to see real results. Check out the video below to see how I use the Google sheet.
I've used this tool to make several hard decisions about which goals to let go. For example, when deciding to build a mobile app with my friend Kemble, I made a firm decision not to look for a new job or start new creative projects, even though those were goals I was excited about.
Closing thoughts and further reading
The reality of life is that there will always be more you want to do than you can. Because of that, developing systems to better prioritize your goals is a critical skill set that can increase your life satisfaction and allow you to achieve more.
Over the last ten years, I have progressively internalized this point more deeply. I've slowly adopted a minimalist approach to my ambitions in life. I now intentionally and aggressively focus on less. This has been driven partly by my fading youth and the realization that I literally cannot do it all. Additionally, several books have nudged me towards adopting a minimalist approach to life and work. If you're interested in diving deeper into this topic, here are some of my favorite resources.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
The central idea of Essentialism is about doing less but better. It's about intentionally pursuing only what is essential and eliminating everything else. The book provides several helpful recommendations for regaining control over how you spend your time and energy.
Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
This book offers a straightforward framework to help you redesign your daily schedules and focus more on the things that matter most. It provides practical strategies to avoid constant distractions and make time for real, focused work. The book's core idea is choosing a single daily highlight to focus on each day – a simple yet powerful concept.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
"Deep Work" is about the benefits and practices of focused, undistracted work. Newport argues that cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits in virtually any profession.