How do you decide what not to work on when planning your year?
How do you decide what not to work on when planning your year?
The underrated skill of strategic quitting and intentional neglect.
Big-picture framing
Deciding what not to work on when planning your year is often more powerful than adding another ambitious goal. By cutting projects and habits that don’t support your direction, you free up bandwidth for work that actually moves the needle. This question isn’t just about productivity; it’s about what you want this year to mean—and which commitments quietly get in the way of that. When you learn to consciously decide what not to work on, your calendar starts to reflect your real priorities, not just your loudest obligations.
Why deciding what not to work on matters
Most annual plans obsess over new goals—launch the product, get promoted, start the podcast. But the quieter, sharper move is to ask, “What will I not do this year?” When you decide what not to work on up front, you’re really choosing how you’ll spend your time, energy, and attention.
Think of your year like a phone with limited battery. Old projects, half-hearted commitments, and vague “shoulds” are the apps running in the background. Closing them doesn’t make you less productive; it lets your remaining work actually work.
Your calendar is already full. Every new “yes” is a hidden “no” to sleep, deep work, or real rest. Making those trade-offs explicit is the whole point of deciding what not to work on.
A simple 3-step filter (with a quick example)
When you’re staring at a big list of possibilities for the year, run each one through this filter:
- Direction: Does this clearly move me toward my 3–5 year direction?
- Leverage: Does this create more value than the time and energy it costs?
- Timing: Is this year the right time, or would “not yet” be smarter?
If you can’t explain the link to your direction in one sentence, leverage is low, or timing is fuzzy, that item is a strong candidate for “not this year.”
Real-world example
Imagine a designer planning their year. Their list: refresh their portfolio, take on three freelance clients, mentor a junior designer, start a YouTube channel, and learn 3D design.
Through the filter:
- Direction: In 3–5 years, they want to be a lead product designer, not a full-time creator.
- Leverage: Mentoring, portfolio quality, and 3D skills all raise their value on that path.
- Timing: A YouTube channel and extra freelance work sound exciting, but both demand ongoing time and attention.
Their decision:
- Yes this year: Portfolio refresh, mentoring, and one focused 3D course.
- Not this year: No YouTube channel; freelance capped at one small project per quarter.
They’re doing fewer visible things, but every “yes” now lines up with where they actually want to be.
Avoiding the classic traps
Even with a framework, a few patterns pull people back into overcommitment:
- Identity traps: “I’m the person who always helps,” or “I say yes to opportunities.” That identity can quietly outrank your long-term goals.
- Sunk-cost guilt: You keep weak projects alive because you’ve already invested time or reputation. In reality, that cost is gone either way.
- Fuzzy priorities: If everything is “kind of important,” anything loud or urgent wins by default.
To counter this, write down 2–3 hard constraints for the year, such as:
- “One major work initiative and one major personal initiative at a time.”
- “No new side projects until July.”
- “No recurring meetings without a clear purpose and agenda.”
Constraints work like lane markers on a highway: they reduce options in the moment so you can move faster overall. When a new opportunity shows up, you’re not deciding from scratch—you’re checking it against rules you wrote when you were thinking clearly.
How to say “not this year” without burning bridges
Deciding what not to work on is one thing; telling other people is another. Here’s how to communicate “not this year” to managers, partners, or stakeholders without sounding uncommitted.
1. Anchor in shared goals
Start with what you are committed to:
- “This year, we agreed my top focus is shipping X and improving Y metric.”
- “To hit that, I need to protect deep work time and avoid spreading too thin.”
You’re not dodging work; you’re protecting the work that matters most to both of you.
2. Make the trade-off explicit
Name the cost in concrete terms:
- “If I take this on, it will push the launch by at least a month.”
- “This would displace the 10 hours a week currently going to customer research.”
You’re shifting the conversation from “Can you do this?” to “Which outcome do we care about more?”
3. Offer a thoughtful alternative
Whenever possible, combine “no” with a constructive next step:
- Suggest delegation: “I think Jordan is close to ready for this; I can help them ramp up.”
- Suggest delay: “Can we revisit this in Q3 after we’ve shipped the core roadmap?”
- Suggest scope: “If this is critical, what can we de-scope from my plate to make room?”
You’re signaling partnership, not obstruction.
4. Use clear, respectful language
Skip vague hedging like “I’ll try to fit it in.” Instead, use phrases like:
- “Given my current priorities, I can’t take this on this year without compromising our main goals.”
- “To stay accountable for the commitments we’ve already made, I need to say no to this for now.”
Straight talk builds more trust over time than polite overpromising.
Bringing it all together
Deciding what not to work on when planning your year is less about being ruthless and more about being honest. You have limited time, energy, and attention; pretending otherwise just creates stress and half-finished work.
So as you plan:
- Start by asking what a great year would actually look like.
- Run your list through direction, leverage, and timing.
- Turn some “maybes” into explicit “not this year.”
- Protect your focus with a few non-negotiable constraints.
- Communicate your “no’s” in terms of shared goals and clear trade-offs.
The result isn’t a perfect plan; it’s a believable one. And that’s the kind you’ll actually follow—and that others can align with.
Summary & what to do next
You decide your year as much by what you cut as by what you add. A simple filter—Does this fit my direction? Is it high leverage? Is the timing right?—helps you choose a few things to pursue deeply and a bunch of things to consciously skip. Write a short “stop-doing” list, set 2–3 hard constraints, and practice explaining your “not this year” decisions in terms of trade-offs and shared priorities. If you want a steady stream of prompts that sharpen how you think and plan, follow QuestionClass’s Question-a-Day at questionclass.com.
📚Bookmarked for You
Here are a few more books to deepen your thinking on focus, trade-offs, and saying “not this year”:
The One Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan – A practical guide to finding the single most important thing to focus on and organizing everything else around it.
Make Time, by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky – Offers simple, experiment-friendly tactics for designing your day so your highest-impact work actually gets done.
Indistractable, by Nir Eyal – Explores how to manage internal and external distractions so you can follow through on the projects and priorities you’ve chosen.
🧬QuestionStrings to Practice
“QuestionStrings are deliberately ordered sequences of questions in which each answer fuels the next, creating a compounding ladder of insight that drives progressively deeper understanding. What to do now: use this one when you plan your year to clarify what you’ll stop doing so your best work has room.”
Annual Focus String
For when you want your year to reflect your real priorities, not just your habits:
“What would make this year undeniably successful?” →
“If I could only achieve one of those things, which would I pick?” →
“What current commitments compete with that priority—or quietly undermine it?” →
“What can I stop, pause, or delegate so this priority gets real time?” →
“What concrete boundaries and scripts will I use to protect that focus over the next 90 days?”
Choosing what not to work on is uncomfortable at first, but it’s how your calendar starts to match your values instead of your impulses. The more deliberately you prune, the more fully the remaining work can grow.
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