Mark Blasini

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Start, Stop, More, Less

In my previous post, I talked about the four types of activities: lifestyle, protective, productive, and destructive. Interestingly, there is an approach I picked up from Brian Tracy (in his book Focal Point) that can help with deciding how to engage with these four activities.

According to Tracy, there are four things you can do to improve your quality of life:

1. Start doings things – e.g. good habits.
2. Stop doing things – e.g. bad habits.
3. Do more of some things – e.g. more communication, more encouraging, more time.
4. Do less of some things – e.g. less criticizing, less self-blaming, etc.

1. What do I want to start doing?
2. What do I want to stop doing?
3. What do I want to do more of?
4. What do I want to do less of?

(The only exception is with destructive activities: you'll only want to either stop doing those or do much less of them.)

Asking these questions gives you a clearer way to make these activities more meaningful for you and contribute to your overall well-being.