The Evaluation - 2: Do Less Of

The Honest Conversation You've Been Avoiding

There's a passage in Romans that reminds us of the human-ness of the apostle Paul.

Paul – an apostle, theologian, church planter, someone who had, by any measure, figured a few things out — writes this with disarming honesty: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." (Romans 7:15) This honest reflection is a powerful example of vulnerability, too.

The man who wrote half the New Testament couldn't stop doing the things that weren't working for him. Not because he lacked discipline. Not because he didn't know better. But because the human condition — the gap between what we intend and what we actually do — is not a personal failure. It's a universal one.

Which means the "do less of" conversation isn't a character assessment. It's an honest inventory. And it might be the most important one you do all year.

The Pattern We Don't Talk About

Last week we asked what to do more of — and that probably felt good. Energising, even. This week is harder, because it requires us to look at the patterns we've normalised. The habits we've justified. The commitments we keep honouring long after they've stopped serving us or anyone else.

Here's what I've noticed — in my own life and in the leaders I work with: we are remarkably creative at explaining why we have to keep doing the exhausting thing. We have developed supporting narratives to those things that don’t serve us well.

I can't say no to this — it would let people down. I've always done it this way. If I don't do it, it won't get done properly. It's just a season. It'll slow down soon.

It never slows down on its own. The inbox doesn't manage itself. The over-commitment doesn't self-correct. The approval-seeking, the people-pleasing, the performing confidence we don't feel — these patterns don't fade without a intentional decision.

What Jesus Said About What Doesn't Actually Matter

Before Paul was honest about his behavioural loops, Jesus had already diagnosed the deeper problem — the things we pour enormous energy into that, in the bigger picture, don't warrant it.

In Matthew 6:27, he points to worry as a prime example: "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" (v.27)

Not as a dismissal of our concerns, but as a genuinely practical observation. Anxiety as a management strategy has a zero percent success rate. Yet for many of us, it occupies prime real estate in our mental and emotional bandwidth — daily, hourly, reflexively.

Jesus goes further. He points to the lilies of the field, the birds of the air — not to romanticise simplicity, but to expose a pattern of misplaced preoccupation. We exhaust ourselves chasing and securing and managing outcomes that were never fully ours to control. And the solution he offers is not to try harder: it's to reorient entirely. "Seek first the Kingdom of God," he says — and watch how much of what you were anxious about gets resolved, or ends up being far less critical than it seemed to our stressed out selves.

It's worth asking honestly: how much of your "do less of" list is rooted not in genuine responsibility, but in the need to feel in control? How much is performance — managing how you appear rather than focusing on what actually matters?

Paul's Other Side of the Coin

Paul understood this tension deeply — and he didn't just confess the problem. He pointed toward the solution with equal clarity.

The same Paul who admitted his own behavioural contradictions in Romans 7 also wrote, from a prison cell, what amounts to a practical cognitive strategy in his letter to the church at Philippi: "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — think about such things." (Philippians 4:8)

And in his letter to the Colossians, he's equally direct: "Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things." (Colossians 3:2)

Notice the active language. Set. Think. These aren't passive states — they're deliberate choices. Paul is telling us that what we do less of isn't only about behaviour. It's about where we consciously, repeatedly choose to direct our attention. We can do less worry, less rumination, less replaying of conversations that are already over — not by suppressing them, but by actively choosing a different focus.

This is also what he means in Romans 12:2 when he talks about being "transformed by the renewing of your mind." Transformation doesn't start with a to-do list. It starts with a thought life. The "do less of" work is, at its root, as much internal as it is external.

Your Stress Diagnostic Tells You Where to Look

If you've been working through the free Stress Diagnostic this month, this is where it becomes most revealing. Look at your Negative Active zone — the things you are doing regularly that you feel negatively about. These are your highest-cost activities. High frequency, low alignment — the precise formula for chronic depletion.

This is where leaders find the meetings that produce nothing. The tasks outside their gifting that no one else has been empowered to take on. And personally, where we find the scrolling, the ruminating, the endless saying yes when every part of us is saying no.

👉🏻[Download the free Stress Diagnostic here]

Why We Don't Stop

If we know something isn't working, why do we keep doing it? Usually it comes down to one of three things.

• Identity. What we do has become so tangled with who we are that stopping feels like loss. If I stop being the one who holds everything together, who am I?

• Fear. Of disappointment. Of the quiet. Of what gets exposed when we remove the busyness.

• Habit. We've simply been doing it so long that we've stopped making a conscious choice. It just... happens.

None of these are solved by willpower alone. They require honesty — and grace. The same grace you'd extend to a friend who admitted they were stuck in a pattern they couldn't break.

This Week's Reflection

1. What are you doing regularly that consistently drains you — yet you keep doing it?

2. Where are you pouring energy into outcomes that were never fully yours to control?

3. What would it look like to actively set your mind somewhere different this week — not by suppressing the worry, but by choosing a deliberate redirect?

4. What would you need to believe — about yourself, about God, about others — in order to do less of it?

The "do less of" list isn't a failure list. It's a freedom list.

Paul named his pattern out loud. That's where change always begins — not with a solution, but with the courage to say: this isn't working, and I'm ready to look at it clearly.

💡Next week: What do you need to start doing? (Hint: it's probably something you already know — and keep putting last.)