3 Ways Highly Effective People Deliberately Do Less, By A Psychologist

InnovationScience3 Ways Highly Effective People Deliberately Do Less, By A PsychologistByMark Travers,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about relationships, personality, and everyday psychology.Follow AuthorApr 24, 2026, 09:11am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.What highly effective people remove from their routines matters as much as what they keep. Here’s how they do less to reach success.gettyThere’s a persistent myth in self-help circles that effectiveness and productivity are functions of volume. We automatically assume that the most successful people among us are the ones who do more, faster, with the greatest intensity possible. But under the right conditions, doing less is actually a far more effective strategy.To be highly effective in your day-to-day, you need to manage your time as well as you can. And to manage your time, a prerequisite is that you also need to manage your cognitive bandwidth. You need to prune your options, restrict your inputs and, when possible, pre-decide your actions. And in doing so, you conserve your precious mental energy for what actually matters. Although this style of productivity looks restrained (if not a little lazy) on the surface, it yields unprecedented returns. Here are three evidence-based ways they deliberately do less, and why their “less is more” philosophy works so well.1. Highly Effective People Limit Their Options To Make Better DecisionsMost people associate more choices with more freedom, which, in theory, makes sense. A wider array of options should, in effect, increase your chances of finding the “best” one. But in practice, the human mind actually tends to struggle under the weight of too many possibilities.Renowned research from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology exemplifies this tension. In one study, shoppers were presented with either a limited sel...