# 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.

- Topic: Productivity & Planning
- Framework: RTF
- Level: Standard
- Tags: Analyze, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/decide-which-tasks-i-should-stop-doing

## Prompt

```text
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.
```

## What to fill in

- PASTE
- GOALS
- DETAILS
- CHECK WITH OWNER

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.