This year I counted my “projects” and realized a problem.
Only one of them lived in Stripe or my bank account.
The rest lived in my browser history.
New tools I was “trying.” Automations I was “setting up.” Notion pages I was “definitely going to use.”
On paper, I had a lot going on.
In reality, I was running one thing at half power and babysitting a zoo of experiments that never fully landed.
Next year, I want something different.
Next year, smaller and deeper.
The invisible work you forgot to price in
Every time you add a tool, you accidentally sign a contract.
You are not just buying a subscription.
You are buying hours of:
Learning the interface
Hooking it up to the tools you already use
Rebuilding habits around it
Debugging when it breaks
Wondering if it is even worth keeping
Most of us never finish that contract.
We pay the onboarding tax, then walk away before the payoff.
Same thing with projects.
A “quick” side project is not just a landing page and a Stripe link. It is:
A new set of customers in your head
A second inbox worth of requests
A new roadmap quietly competing with your main one
You tell yourself, “It only takes 5 hours a week.”
You forget that context switching between two businesses can quietly consume 15.
None of this shows up on your calendar.
You only feel it in that low-level hum of “why am I always behind.”
AI made this problem louder, not smarter
The story we got sold was “AI will do it for you.”
What actually happened for most people I know:
They kept their original stack, then added three AI layers on top.
ChatGPT to write stuff
A bunch of AI features inside tools they already do not fully use
Maybe an “AI agent” promised to glue it all together
Now, instead of one messy setup, they have the same mess plus a robot they need to supervise.
I am not anti AI. I like the little gremlins.
But they are multipliers. If your system is scattered, they multiply the chaos.
Next year does not need more layers.
It needs fewer surfaces.
The profitable distraction in your life
Everyone has one.
A side project that “kind of works,” brings in some money, makes you feel smart.
A newsletter with a few hundred subs.
An e-commerce store ticking along.
A tiny SaaS that pays for your coffee.
It is not failing, so it feels rude to shut it down.
It proves you can build. It proves you are “diversified.”
But look at the cost.
If your main thing is doing $200K a year and the side thing is doing $20K, yet the side thing takes 20 percent of your thinking, you are giving up the chance to push the main thing harder.
The expensive part is not the five hours you spend inside the side project.
It is the mental tab that never closes.
You are answering support emails in your head while you are supposed to be designing a new feature.
You are checking sales from the side shop when you should be talking to main-project customers.
It is profitable on paper.
It is a distraction in practice.
Fewer tools is not minimalism, it is strategy
This is not about living a pure life in a cabin with a single text editor and a candle.
It is about making a bet.
You can bet that:
More tools and more projects will somehow stitch together into leverage.
Or you can bet that:
One main thing, supported by a small set of tools you have actually mastered, will compound over time.
One bet feels exciting in screenshots.
The other feels a little boring, then quietly changes your life.
Fewer tools means:
Fewer decisions about where information lives
Fewer places for work to hide
Fewer “I swear I set up an automation for this” moments
The freedom is not in having all the options.
The freedom is in having already decided.
A tiny experiment for next year
Do not blow up your life. Just run a test.
For the next 90 days:
Pick one main project
The thing that would actually move your life or business if it grew.Pick three core tools that support it
For example: one for communication, one for tasks, one for storage or docs. AI counts as one of these, not five.Declare everything else “on pause”
No new tools. No new projects. Current side projects either get parked or put on a strict maintenance-only diet.Finish the integration work
Do the boring setup you usually skip. Templates, folders, tags, whatever “real use” looks like for that tool.Notice the feeling
Pay attention to what changes. Time, sure. But also the quiet in your head, the quality of the work, the way decisions get easier.
If it feels worse, you can always go back to chaos.
But my guess is you will feel something like relief. Maybe a little grief. Mostly, though, power.
Because you finally stopped being the person who “could do all these things”
and started being the person who actually finished one.
Next year, smaller and deeper.
Not because it is morally superior.
Because focus is still the weirdest unfair advantage left.