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Monday Morning Motivation: The Stop-Doing List
The list you never wrote
Every founder I know has a to-do list a mile long.
Almost none of them have a stop-doing list.
That asymmetry is why your week feels heavy before it even starts. You're carrying every project, every recurring meeting, every half-built initiative, every "I should probably look at that again" tab. Nothing gets removed. Things only get added.
The founders who pull ahead aren't the ones working harder. They're the ones cutting faster.
The principle
Your calendar, your roadmap, and your mental load are all governed by the same rule: you can't add clarity. You can only subtract noise.
Every time you say yes to something new without killing something old, your focus thins. Six months in, you're "busy." Twelve months in, you're stuck. You didn't lose focus in one big moment. You lost it through a thousand small additions nobody questioned.
Four prompts to run this week
1. The 30-day audit. Look at everything on your plate that's been there 30+ days with no real movement. If it hasn't moved, it's not a priority. It's a guilt object. Kill it or schedule it. No third option.
2. The recurring meeting test. Pick one recurring meeting on your calendar. Cancel it for two weeks and see if anyone notices. If nobody flinches, kill it permanently. You'll get back four to eight hours a month per meeting.
3. The "who else" question. For every task you're doing this week, ask: who else could do this at 80% as well as me? If the answer exists and you're still doing it, that's the task you delegate or drop.
4. The one initiative you're afraid to kill. You know the one. The project you keep half-funding because killing it feels like admitting something. Sit with it. Either commit fully or shut it down by Friday. The middle ground is what's draining you.
A quick story
A founder I worked with last year had eight active "priorities." Revenue was flat. He thought he needed more hours.
I made him print the list and cross out five with a marker. Not later. In the meeting. He pushed back hard on every cut. We did it anyway.
Ninety days later, revenue was up 40%. Same team. Same market. Fewer things.
The throughput was always there. The list was the problem.
The directive
This week: write your stop-doing list before you touch your to-do list. Cross out three things by the end of the day on Monday, and don't add them back.
Cut your investor stack down to one tool. For a dollar.
If your raise is living across spreadsheets, your inbox, three browser tabs, and a Notion doc you haven't opened in a week — that's the next thing on your stop-doing list.
Find Your Perfect Investor is the operating system we built to run a raise end-to-end: find investors, manage outreach, track relationships, and close the round. One platform. Every tool. $1 per month.
It's the same stack we use ourselves and run for our clients.