Get more done by doing less

I know that sounds impossible, but it's not.

Get more done by doing less.

Most people work harder to get less done because they've confused motion with progress. They mistake being busy for being productive.

I've been obsessed with this problem because I live it every day. You probably do too.

You work all day but feel behind. You're exhausted but have nothing meaningful to show for it. You hop from task to task, meeting to meeting, always moving but never advancing toward what actually matters.

You're wasting years of your life feeling productive while making no real progress. Someone else with half your work ethic is lapping you because they focus only on what moves the needle.

If we're honest with ourselves, most of the work we spend time on doesn't move us closer to our goals. Rather, we're working to avoid the discomfort of not working, not to create real progress.

When you stop doing work that doesn't matter and focus only on what moves the needle, you get dramatically more done in less time. You can accomplish more in 3 focused hours than most people do in 3 scattered days.

The hardest workers often accomplish the least because they never stop to ask what's actually worth working on.

Here's the 4-step process to focus on what matters:

Step 1: Get Clear On Your Goal

To prioritize and understand what's worth doing—and what will actually move the needle—you need clarity on your overarching goal. Your north star. What are you aiming to achieve?

Most people skip this step and wonder why they feel scattered. They're trying to be productive without knowing what they're being productive toward. It's like getting in your car and driving fast without knowing your destination—you'll just get lost faster.

Say you want financial freedom. Not the flashy money kind, but the kind where you create sustainable income from work you genuinely want to spend time doing, on your own terms. You start with that overarching goal.

From there, keep asking "how" until you land on something concrete. How do you achieve financial freedom? You need to make money. How do you make money? You need to provide value to the marketplace. How do you provide value? Through goods and services.

This leads to a fork: do you want to create a product to sell, or offer your skills as a service? Once you decide, you have your filter.

The key is specificity. "I want to be successful" isn't a goal—it's a wish. "I want to generate $10k monthly revenue by selling a digital course teaching Excel skills to small business owners" is a goal. One gives you a filter, the other gives you confusion.

Step 2: Apply Your Filter

Does this activity help me either create this good or develop a skill that can be sold in the market?

This filter becomes your decision-making framework for everything. Every meeting invitation, every project request, every "opportunity" gets run through this filter. If it doesn't directly advance your goal, it's a distraction disguised as work.

It's like studying for a final exam by organizing your desk, color-coding your notes, and researching the best study apps instead of actually studying the material. Everything feels productive, but only one thing moves you toward your goal.

Here's what this looks like in practice:

Busy work that feels important:

• Attending networking events "for your business"

• Reading industry news and blogs

• Organizing your workspace and digital files

• Taking courses on topics adjacent to your goal

• Responding to every email within an hour

Work that actually moves the needle:

• Building your actual product or service

• Reaching out directly to potential customers

• Practicing and improving your core skill

• Creating content that attracts your ideal audience

• Testing and iterating based on real feedback

Once you have this filter, you're forced to make uncomfortable decisions. You have to accept that everything not directly tied to achieving that goal is a distraction. This is where most people fail—they know what's important but refuse to say no to what isn't.

Step 3: Focus on the Next 18 Hours

Steve Jobs had a process to achieve more in a year than most people do in their lifetime. He would ask: what are the 3 most important things for me to get done in the next 18 hours?

This isn't about being more efficient with your current to-do list. It's about completely rebuilding your to-do list around what actually matters.

When you sit down with your calendar and to-do list, ask yourself: "In the next 18 hours, what do I NEED to get done to get closer to my goal?"

Think of packing for a flight that leaves tomorrow morning. You don't spend time reorganizing your entire closet or shopping for new luggage. You pack what you need for this specific trip.

Write those things down in priority order. Usually it's 3-5 things. Focus on the essential few that move you forward.

Now add them to your calendar and block off the time. Use a 1.5x multiplier on how long you think each task will take—we're terrible at predicting completion times, with a bias toward thinking we'll finish faster than we will.

You're not trying to fit important work around your busy work. You're scheduling important work first, and everything else becomes optional. Most people do the opposite—they fill their day with busy work and hope to squeeze in important work afterward.

Step 4: Eliminate Everything Else

Now you have a schedule of highly focused, high-signal activities. Commit to yourself, these are the things that need to get done. Any time you spend doing anything else that day is busy work, not productive work.

Here's the question most people don't want to ask: does that busy work you think "still needs to get done" actually need to exist?

In reality, most of it doesn't. You've just been told it's important by people whose goals aren't your goals. The busy work you think is unavoidable is often just... made up. Created by other people's priorities, not yours.

It's like training for a marathon. You don't spend your training time learning tennis or perfecting your golf swing - even though those are 'fitness activities.' You run. Everything else, no matter how athletic it seems, is a distraction from your goal.

What to eliminate immediately:

• Meetings that don't directly advance your goal (most of them)

• Email checking more than 2-3 times per day

• Social media "research" that never leads to action

• Courses and content about productivity instead of your actual field

• Projects you said yes to before you had your filter

The uncomfortable truth is we're addicted to feeling busy because it protects us from the vulnerability of attempting something that actually matters. Busy work has guaranteed completion. Important work risks failure. Your brain will always try to trick you back into the comfort of motion over the discomfort of progress.

The people who get more done by doing less have learned to say no to almost everything so they can say yes to the few things that count.

Bottom Line

You can work 80 hours a week and still be lazy if you're working on the wrong things. Being busy is a choice. Being productive is a discipline.

Stop choosing motion over progress, comfort over growth, urgent over important. Your future self is counting on what you do today—make sure it actually counts.

The question isn't whether you have time to work on what matters. The question is whether you have the discipline to stop working on what doesn't.

Hope this provides some clarity.

—Johnathan