Neuroscience Confirms Why Doing Less Helps You Achieve More

TITLE: Neuroscience Confirms - Why Doing Less Helps You Achieve More CHANNEL: Dr. Matt Jones DATE: 2026-05-09 ---TRANSCRIPT--- So, there’s a thought that I’ve been toying with lately, and honestly, the more that I think about it, the more that I think most people have this completely backwards. The thought is, when someone feels stuck, and I’m in a very unique position to see this a lot as a physician, when they feel like they’re super behind or not making progress, the first thing that people do is add something. A new habit, a new system, something new that they read about, some new goals or structure that they saw in a video on YouTube. More hyper optimization. I can’t tell you how often I see this, and it seems like the best thought. I get it. That feels like you’re doing it the right way, like you’re being much more serious about moving forward. But again, here’s what I keep seeing, and I see this with patients. I see this with the people that I work with as clients. I have lived this myself. Trust me, I’m not trying to be a hypocrite here. I’ve been there many times. The people who actually progress and move forward over time, like genuinely succeed year after year, have less going on, not more. They have fewer commitments. They have fewer active goals at the same time, and we’re going to get into that in a minute. Yet, somehow they get significantly more done. Because I used to be over here in that group that just had the biggest plate of all time, and I thought that adding was the only move to be more successful, because you see people, oh, just outwork the others, just do this, do that. I wanted to understand it, because it was bothering me that I didn’t. And now I’m going to walk you through what I figured out. You are really going to want to stay for this, because what I’m about to cover is what’s actually happening in your brain when you have way too many things happening at once, why adding more almost always backfires, and then what you can actually do about it. I’m going to move through this efficiently because I respect your time. This doesn’t have to be a 30-minute video. I may talk fast at times, but just rewatch if you need to or slow it down. But, stay with me because the practical part at the end is going to be incredibly useful in your life. So, let’s start simply. Let’s start by kind of putting it into some more computer terms cuz that’ll make sense for people. Your brain is running background processes constantly. I mean that literally, okay? Every unfinished commitment, every goal you’ve set that you haven’t touched, everything on your to-do list that you’re going to get to, been there. Those are all just open background apps running. And they don’t just sit there not taking any cognitive load waiting for you to open them again. They’re running in the background all the time. They’re taking up cognitive space, burning through your mental energy whether you’re aware of that or not. And there’s good research on this. Unresolved decisions actually drain more cognitive energy than unfinished task. Meaning that the things you’ve been pushing off, that goal that you haven’t really started, but that habit you’ve told yourself you’re going to do, that is costing you a lot more mental bandwidth than if you just decided to not do it at all. The point is if you just decided not to do it at all, you would have at least closed that background task. Does that make sense? When you have 15 things that you’re technically working on, your brain isn’t just carrying 15 things when you sit down to focus and work. It’s carrying 15 things all the time. That cognitive tax and load is constant. And what you end up with is a constant low-grade exhaustion. I’m sure that resonated. This is also really hard for people to trace back to the cause, and honestly, this is something that I can kind of feel out in the room with patients sometimes when I’m talking to them, but in a doctor-patient setting, it’s often times, I find it difficult at least, to trace that back to the root cause as well. This is really something that I’m making the video about because I think it’s something that’s best that you work through yourself. But a good way, I think, to describe this feeling is like you sit down to do one thing, but you already feel worn out before you’ve even started. Or maybe you get worn out within a few minutes. A lot of people think that this feeling of burnout that they feel is because they’re lazy, but often times, I don’t really think that’s the case. You just have way too much going on. You’ve been running way too many things at the same time for too long, and it feels like nothing’s moving. So, here’s the part that really surprised me the more I looked into this. The research on goals is pretty clear that having multiple competing goals, things that require the same limited resources, your time, attention, your mental energy, this actually reduces performance. When people are given quantity goals and quality goals at the same time, more often than not, they sacrifice quality for quantity. People gravitate towards whatever feels completable rather than whatever actually matters. And I see this a lot. I’ve made videos on how to set up a to-do list, not just putting a million things on there to hit that dopamine hit every time. It’s the similar concept. People will hunt for easy wins, and the important stuff just gets pushed back and deferred. This is why I say that not everything on your list needs to be a priority. There’s also some interesting research across organizations showing that companies with fewer strategic priorities significantly outperform those with a bunch of them. And listen, I know you’re not a growing company, but I feel like the same dynamic plays out individually in most people every single day. When you’re trying to run 10 things at the same time, you pretty much make process on everything, but finish nothing, or at least not the things that you should. So, I know what you’re probably thinking. I’ve heard the do less advice before, particularly from this channel. And it always feels like they’re telling me to be lazy. So, let’s address that directly, because that is not what I’m saying at all. I want to make sure I can articulate this correctly. But, adding things feels like the effort. It feels like you’re taking the problem seriously. Subtracting something gives you no feedback. There’s no moment of satisfaction when you remove a goal from your list. And if you spend any time on social media, which ironically is the context which most people are consuming self-improvement content, including this one, the culture there rewards this very visible effort. The perfect morning routine, reading a book a day, or like five. I literally saw a video about someone who’s like, “I read seven books a day.” No, you don’t. But, it rewards a growing list of things that you’re working on. But, you have to keep in mind, so many of the people saying that actually have a pretty small to-do list themselves. They are being rewarded for looking good by telling you they’re reading seven books a day. That’s like their one thing. The problem is, doing less doesn’t look very ambitious when it’s usually the much more ambitious move, because it’s going to get you a lot further. The people that I have watched execute well over long stretches of time, and I mean really freaking execute, okay? Not just talk about it, or post about it. They protect few things with significant intensity. And I have adopted this in my life over the past year, and my goodness has my life improved astronomically. They’re not doing less because they’re less serious than others. They’re doing it because putting a focused effort compounds way more over a longer period of time than this scattered fizzling out effort that’s much more performative. One thing done and then the next after the other consistently at a nice depth. I want to add that part. I mean, you really do need to commit. This drastically changes things. 10 things done at a very surface level that don’t move the needle forward indefinitely, if you want, will just make you feel busy and really not get you where you want to be. We have turned ourselves into robots that are just getting through tasks. That is not what you were put on this earth to do. I don’t have the answer to that, probably, but it’s not that. I can confidently say that. Invest in things passionately in your life, and your enjoyment will go up astronomically. I actually just released a video on this about four things that I think are very important if you do want a goal, a target to aim for. It might be worth watching. I’ll make sure it’s at the end of this video. You might really, really find a target here based on this conversation. All right, so let’s get to the practical piece, and thank you for still being with me here. Your attention span is better than about 99% of the population at this point, so drop a comment if you’re still here. I’m really curious. Okay, so I actually do want you to try this though, okay? This is going to be a really good exercise. Write down everything that you’re currently doing. Every habit, every goal, every system, commitment that you’ve made to yourself. Don’t filter it out. Just get it out on paper or a notes list or something. Then I want you to ask yourself, in the last 30 days, which of these have I done consistently? Circle those or put a star next to them. Then ask, of the things that I have actually done, which ones have produced something real? Better energy, better output, more happiness, better health. Something you can actually point to. Circle those or put a star next to it. What’s left after that second filter there? That is probably what you should pay attention to and put some extra focus on. Everything else, you are paying a cognitive tax without any return. I went through a stretch during training in medical school and part of residency where I was trying to optimize everything at once. Look, you are around superhumans. We are in this field, okay? Some of these people are absolutely amazing. They’re just leaps and bounds in productivity above what you think a human is even capable of. And you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to match that.” But, priorities are different for different people, okay? I was sleep tracking, nutrition logging, reading goals out loud. I was doing two workout protocols, meditation, journaling, social media, and optimizing that to a T. So much more. And I was doing all of it at maybe at best 40%. My schedule was so intense and so loaded, I hardly had any social life. I acted like I did, but the entire time I was with other people, I was thinking about the next post I was going to make, how I can optimize this, what I’m doing here, how this is a waste of my time. Horrible way to live. I was taking nuggets that I was reading from books every single day and trying to implement them in my life pretty much every day, making the list longer and longer of things to do. This got so bad that I actually passed out in clinic one day from exhaustion. Quite a wake-up call. I’m trying to stop you before you get there. And I know many of you watching this video aren’t near as extreme, but I do still think the principles will really resonate. Once I cut back to two to three things that actually moved the needle for me, training consistently, protecting my sleep, not touching my phone in the morning, my output went up drastically. Because I stopped spinning energy managing systems that were way the heck too complex to actually maintain. The goal isn’t to build the most impressive-looking routine, unless you’re a social media influencer. But the goal is to find the few things that genuinely move your life forward and protect those at all cost. That is what it actually looks like from the outside when someone is doing well. It might be boring, but it’s simple and it works. So, before you look for something else to add, and I know the temptation, believe me, I do, ask what you can remove first. What’s on your plate right now that isn’t producing anything meaningful? What are you holding onto out of guilt rather than because it’s working for you? What would actually happen if you just stopped? Those questions alone can make more of a difference in your life than almost anything else. Now, I did mention a lot of research here, and as always when I mention research like this, I will post the link to the articles in the description. Check them out if you want. And if you want to go much further and deeper than this video, because I can only post so much information in a YouTube video at this point, if you want the full blueprint, the step-by-step version of how I stripped things back and rebuilt from the ground up that is in my book. It took me 3 years to get this to you. I worked tirelessly on it. It is fully comprehensive across all aspects of your life. It is called From Dull to Doctor. How I rewired my brain and body for success and how you can, too. This is everything that I wish I had when I was struggling in the thick of it. Going from tutoring 7 days a week to try to get through school and being behind so many of my peers to a medical doctor with multiple master’s degrees, which one of which I got simultaneously while I was in medical school, thriving social media career, relationships, and a beautiful life. I say that because I deeply wish I had this guide. And that is why I wrote it for you. I will link to the top of the description. I truly hope it helps. And I want to meet people with where they’re at. That’s why I offer things like this. I do have a free 30-day blueprint that I’ll also link in the description. Truly, I’m trying to make health accessible. It’s why I do what I do, and I love what I do. Okay. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed this, subscribe, drop a like, comment, all the things. I really want to know your thoughts, okay? It The feedback helps me tremendously. If this video helped you, if it resonated, share this with a loved one or someone that you care about. It’s completely free and the least that you can do to help them. And as always, I’m Dr. Mike Jones. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.