Do fewer things better...

The hardest things to do most of the time is less, even when it's clearly better than the alternative.

Hi,

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been deeply mired in our new Frictionless Growth Challenge, and the number one thing that stands out is how many times I’ve told people “Do fewer things better”.

Honestly, that is like…the whole secret. I want it to be more complicated, but in general the person who can focus on their path of least friction the most and the longest without getting distracted by shiny bells and baubles wins almost every time.

Unfortunately, humans are preternaturally terrible at that kind of focus on our own. It turns out there is no upper limit to how many times a human needs to hear “do fewer things better” before they get it through their head.

Social media has strengthened the wiring inside us desperate to do more things worse, but the programming has always been there.

We’re trained to push any button we find until cheese comes out…except most things we get caught up in don’t even dispense cheese. On a good day, they dispense validation, but validation and $10 barely buys you a wheel of cheap gouda.

The smartest humans in the world, who should be working to bring us to Mars, cure cancer, and solve world hunger, are instead working at tech companies trying to make their “cheese-based substitute” as addictive as possible, with the express permission of world governments (and often plenty of their help).

It’s really hard to compete with that on our own, and if we can’t break the cycle, we’ll never have the success we want. If you want to go far in 2026, you should prep by:

• Before the new year, complete our modified Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize your time and energy. Combine that with narrowing down your Path of Least Friction, so you can go into 2026 with a plan and a direction.

• Once you know your zone of genius and have filled in your matrix, use this article to find out what to prioritize next.

• Based on what you learn, pick one of these seven pillars every quarter, and decide on no more than one platform to build on, one product to sell, and one pathway to drive traffic to your offer underneath that pillar. Commit to change them out no more than once a month.

• Aside from things that are already working, and/or that you already committed to, don’t do anything else new. Write any new ideas in a booklet or a scratchpad until your next quarterly planning session. The lack of choice is done intentionally to make you choose better. If you’re doing things that don’t work, set a timeline to sunset that task and stick to it.

• Give yourself at least one day of planning every quarter, one hour of planning a month, 20-minutes per week, and 5-minutes per day to check in with your plan. You can find the principles of a sustainable plan here. If you’re in Hapitalist, we have a dozen workbooks to help you plan.

• As you go about your day, schedule a timer for every two hours. When it goes off, check in with your body and track how you feel. Note it down, along with any trends you feel in your body. Review during your planning sessions. Your body can’t distinguish between physical and psychological threats. It’s designed to keep you safe, so it doesn’t want you trying anything new. You have to train it to be okay with your success at every stage of your journey. You can learn more about that here.

The path to success is all very knowable. On almost every level, it is even extremely doable. The problem is that it’s very, very hard to execute consistently. Even the most successful people I know, many of whom got successful specifically by following this advice, are awful at it long-term, so what hope do you have of doing it alone?

Even in Hapitalist, where people pay me to tell them to do fewer things better, members still barely do it after months and months of me harping on it.

That’s not because they are bad, you are bad, or I am bad. It is because there is no upper limit to how many times a human needs to hear “do fewer things better” before they get it through their head.

It might seem easy, but we are built to squirrel, and if we don’t have somebody there to help get us back on track, we simply don’t get back on track. Before you know it, we’re in September 2026 and you’re still distracted by a hundred shiny objects.

It is so much easier to do more things. Doing things feels good. Being busy means there’s action happening, even if it’s the wrong action. You can’t fault people when they are active, right? If you’re busy and fail, then you’re just unlucky. If you don’t do things, and fail, then you’re lazy.

We optimize not to look lazy, instead of optimizing to be successful.

Staying still means wrestling with silence, and the last thing we want is to be alone with our thoughts. We have these bodies that constantly vacillate between anxiety and boredom trying desperately to do things, and when we stop they start screaming at us about all the ways we suck.

Doing fewer things takes a level of faith most people don’t have in themselves. We can put faith in other people easily enough, but having even a fraction of that kind of faith in ourselves…forget about it.

Unfortunately, all of this holds us back from the success we crave. Our minds fight us. Our bodies fight us. Society fights us. All of it makes us so tired we can barely keep our eyes open most days.

Ever think maybe some of that is because animals are supposed to rest most of the time? Lions sleep 18 hours. Deer mainly eat and sleep. Dogs don’t do much most of the time. We’re built to conserve our excess energy to be used when necessary. Instead, we’re squandering it on any old thing that comes our way.

Not only does our body need us to chill, but success needs us to chill, too. Having and maintaining success is about trend lines, and trend lines take time to gather. It is about gathering and deploying resources appropriately, and we can’t do that if we’re constantly in motion.

Only stopping allows us to see how far we’ve come, and what’s actually helped us get there.

When you do too many things, it’s impossible to isolate the variables to see which ones are actually working. Because there is forward momentum, we think everything is fine, but probably there are 1-3 things that account for 80% of that growth, and several things working against it.

If you could just figure out the things that work, and cut the things that don’t, you would actually be further than you are now, because you wouldn’t be weighed down by those burdens.

I’ve built my career taking advantage of things that worked, and abandoning them once they became a burden. The times when I had the least growth were also the times when I was doing the most stuff.

• When shows worked, I did a 40+ a year. Now, they don’t work, so I don’t do them.

• Kickstarters work, but they are exhausting my audience. So, I’m cutting back.

• Subscriptions work, but not as well as before, so I need to tweak them.

• Fiction worked for a long time, now I’m more in a non-fiction era.

• Our conference was fun, but it was weighing us down financially, so we ended it, and even closed the company associated with it in 2025, despite it accounting for 50% of my revenue.

There is no shame cutting things that don’t work. Most things are meant to work for a season, not a lifetime. Quitting things isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign that you’re serious.

Contrary to popular opinion, winners always quit.

We think we’re bad if everything’s not working, but everything doesn’t works for anyone, certainly not at the same time. This is why we have to constantly update and revise our plan. Platforms rise and fall, strategies work until they don’t, businesses succeed until they fail, and vice versa.

If you’re doing too many things, mired in the weeds, it’s impossible to see that. Once you start ruthlessly cutting, what works and doesn’t becomes clear as day.

And if you cut too far, you can always add it back. Sometimes, the best way to see something’s value is to go without it for a bit.

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash