152: Do Less — On Entropic Bloat & Business Haircuts ✂️

As I share in Free Time, nowhere is entropy more visually evident than in older homes or ones in nature. I remember staying at a cabin in the Catskills, where I could see right before my eyes all forms of plants and animals encroaching on the once-pristine house. 

Without upkeep, a dead tree teetered precariously toward the roof, weeds started overtaking the grass, spiders made themselves comfortable in bathroom corners, giant carpenter ants traversed the kitchen counters, and we spotted a garden snake crawling into the crevices of the outdoor hot tub.

Entropy, defined as a gradual decline into disorder, is intrinsic to all organic systems, and it’s happening in your business, too. In this episode, I’m talking about entropic bloat and why we need to actively decide to do less, giving our business regular “haircuts” along the way.

🌟 Key Takeaway: Due to entropic bloat, you need to actively eliminate aspects of your business that are no longer serving you. Ways to give your business a haircut:

1. Raise prices

2. Stop doing custom proposals

3. Don’t negotiate

4. Reset your boundaries

5. Sell only one flagship product or service 

6. Aggressively block your calendar

7. Choose two focus areas for the year

8. Tighten your filter

9. Say no more, even when you’re excited

10. Rethink contract terms

11. Create content assets

12. Shut down stale services

13. Double check: eliminate before you delegate

14. Create automations that eliminate future steps and friction

📝Permission: To be selfish in service of your business. Do less so you can say yes to producing more of your best work — the work you’ll look back on at the end of the year and be most proud of.

✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Conduct an audit of all the projects and recurring tasks you have delegated to team members in your business and reconsider if they should be done at all.

📘Books Mentioned:

• Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business 

• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One

• Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done by Jocelyn K. Glei

• Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte

• What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting by Tara McMullin

• Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu

• Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Ambitious Women by Kate Northrup

🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 

• 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin

• 143: Exploring Time, Money, and Energy Capacity with Tara McMullin and Charlie Gilkey

• 091: Quarterly Planning with Charlie Gilkey

• 140: How to License Your IP (Intellectual Property)

• 052: Perceived Capacity vs. Actual Capacity

• 106: Splatology—On Clearing Time Clutter

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