Decide which tasks I should stop doing
Finds work you can eliminate, explains the risk of stopping each item, and drafts the message telling people.
The prompt
Help me decide what to stop doing.
My current tasks, reports, meetings, and recurring commitments: [PASTE]
My main goals and what I'm accountable for: [GOALS]
Who asked for or uses each item (if known): [DETAILS]
Anything I must keep for legal, audit, or contractual reasons: [DETAILS]
Test each item:
- Does anyone use the output? What would break if it stopped for a month?
- Does it serve my goals, or only a habit or a past need?
- Is someone else already doing it (duplicate work)?
- Could it be done less often, shorter, or to a lighter standard instead of stopped?
Return:
1. Table: | Item | Who relies on it | Value today | Risk if stopped | Verdict (Stop / Shrink / Keep) | Hours freed per month |
2. A stop-doing list, safest first.
3. For each Stop or Shrink: how to stop well - who to tell, a trial period (e.g. pause for 4 weeks and see who notices), and a fallback if it turns out to matter.
4. A short, professional message for each change that I can send by email, Teams, or Slack.
5. Total time freed and what I should put it toward.
Do not recommend stopping anything I flagged as required. Where you can't tell who relies on something, mark it [CHECK WITH OWNER] instead of guessing.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Productivity & Planning prompts
What to fill in
- PASTE
- GOALS
- DETAILS
- CHECK WITH OWNER
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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