Last Tuesday, I caught myself mindlessly scrolling through LinkedIn at 10:47 PM, double-tapping on someone’s post about “crushing Q4 goals” while my actual work sat untouched in another browser tab. That’s when it hit me: I’d been doing this exact thing for months, maybe years, and getting absolutely nothing from it except a vague sense of professional inadequacy and eye strain.
This wasn’t the first time I’d noticed myself stuck in a pointless loop. Over the past year, I’ve quietly stopped doing several things that used to eat up chunks of my time and mental energy. Not in any dramatic, life-changing way, but more like finally admitting that certain habits had outlived their usefulness. Here’s what I dropped and why you might want to consider doing the same.
Professional Social Media That Isn’t Actually Professional
LinkedIn used to feel necessary, like flossing or updating your resume. I’d scroll through posts about “thought leadership” and “authentic networking,” occasionally sharing articles I thought made me look appropriately engaged with my industry. The problem was that none of it felt authentic, and worse, it wasn’t actually helping my career in any measurable way.
The final straw came when I realized I was spending more time curating my professional persona online than actually developing professional skills. I kept my profile updated but stopped the daily scrolling ritual. Now I check it maybe once a week, usually when someone sends me a direct message. The result? I have more time to read actual industry publications and work on projects that might genuinely advance my career.
This one’s for you if you find yourself performing professionalism more than practicing it. Your actual work speaks louder than your LinkedIn engagement rate.
Keeping Up With Every Streaming Service
For a while there, I had subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney Plus, and Apple TV Plus. I justified each one: Netflix for the documentaries, Hulu for the next-day TV shows, HBO for the prestige dramas, Disney Plus for the Marvel content, Apple TV for the few shows everyone kept recommending. I was paying about $60 a month to have access to more content than I could watch in several lifetimes.
The breaking point came when I spent twenty minutes scrolling through all five apps without finding anything I actually wanted to watch. I was paying for the illusion of choice, not for entertainment I was genuinely enjoying. Now I keep one or two services at a time, cycling through them when I finish a show or series I’m genuinely excited about.
If you’re paying for multiple streaming services but still complaining there’s nothing good to watch, this approach might save you both money and decision fatigue. Sometimes constraints actually improve the experience.
Aspirational Purchases That Collect Dust
My kitchen drawer used to contain a mandoline slicer, a spiralizer, and a set of specialty measuring spoons I bought after watching too many cooking videos on Instagram. I had convinced myself that owning the right tools would transform me into someone who meal-prepped elaborate grain bowls and turned vegetables into noodles. Instead, these items sat unused while I continued making the same five meals I’d been rotating through for years.
The mandoline was particularly embarrassing because I’d spent forty-five minutes researching the best one, reading reviews about blade sharpness and safety features. I used it exactly twice before it became an expensive reminder of the gap between who I thought I wanted to be and who I actually am.
Now I ask myself a simple question before buying anything that promises to change my habits: “Am I buying this because I actually want to use it, or because I want to be the type of person who uses it?” The answer is usually revealing. This filter works for gym equipment, craft supplies, and pretty much anything sold with the promise of becoming your “best self.”
Saying Yes to Events I Don’t Want to Attend
For years, I operated under the assumption that being social meant accepting every invitation, even to events that sounded exhausting or irrelevant to my interests. Birthday parties for acquaintances I barely knew, networking events that felt like elaborate small-talk competitions, dinner parties where I’d spend the evening making conversation with people I had nothing in common with except mutual friends.
The shift happened gradually. I started paying attention to how I felt before, during, and after these events. More often than not, I’d dread them beforehand, feel drained during them, and leave wondering why I’d come. Meanwhile, the events I actually enjoyed were the ones where I could have real conversations with people I genuinely liked, usually in smaller groups or more relaxed settings.
Now I’m more selective. I still say yes to things that sound interesting or meaningful, but I’ve stopped treating every invitation like an obligation. The result is that my social calendar has fewer events but higher-quality interactions. If you find yourself regularly attending things out of duty rather than desire, you might benefit from being more intentional about where you spend your social energy.
Optimizing Everything
There was a period where I tried to hack and optimize every aspect of my daily routine. I tracked my sleep, timed my meals, used apps to monitor my productivity, and color-coded my calendar to maximize efficiency. I read articles about morning routines and tried to implement the habits of successful people I’d never met.
The irony was that all this optimization was making my life feel less optimal. I was spending so much energy tracking and measuring that I had less energy for the actual activities I was trying to improve. Plus, constantly evaluating whether I was doing things “right” made even simple pleasures feel like performance metrics.
These days, I keep a few basic systems that genuinely help me stay organized, but I’ve abandoned the quest to turn myself into a perfectly efficient human. Some things work better when you’re not constantly measuring them. If you find yourself spending more time optimizing your life than actually living it, consider which systems truly help you and which ones just create the illusion of control.
The common thread in all of these changes is that they weren’t dramatic decisions but gradual realizations that certain activities had stopped adding value to my life. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply stop doing what isn’t working, even if it feels like you should want it to work. What would you add to this list?