January is always that month of promise. Motivation surges, goals multiply, and before we know it, we’ve loaded our to-do list with new habits, ambitions, responsibilities, and dreams. And then, almost predictably, by the end of the month many of those resolutions don’t stick, feeding the mental loop of why can’t I ever keep this up?

There is nothing wrong with a little inspiration and motivation, but the problem with being over inspired and over motivated, is that we overreach our bodies capacity to actually stick to our goals. And as a results, we learn not to trust ourselves. We set the same goals every year, only to feed back into the loop of: I just can't stick to my goals.

So for several years now, I’ve been proposing a different January frame. Instead of asking what we want to add, I first ask what we want to remove. How can we do less, on purpose, to create space for the one or two things that truly matter?

This month’s blog is about exactly that: removing unnecessary stressors, responsibilities, and inputs. It’s deeply personal to me too. Every January, especially working in the health space, I’m bombarded with new tools, new methods, new trainings I’m supposedly still missing. And my challenge is always the same: not getting pulled by novelty or social media into doing more, but staying grounded in what I already know and practice. Yoga, breathwork, Internal Family Systems, behavioral design. Trusting that integration is more valuable than accumulation. So this January, I’m choosing fewer goals, clearer priorities, and more space. And I’m inviting you to do the same.

Removing Stressors: Why Doing Less Is Often the Missing Step

One of the most important distinctions I keep coming back to when I talk about burnout and chronic stress is the difference between stress and stressors.

Stress is what happens inside you as a response to a stressor outside of you.

- Mo Gawdat in: Unstressable: A Practical Guide to Stress-Free Living

Stress is the internal response created by interpretation about the stressor. Stressors are the things that trigger this stress response. And if we want to recover from burnout or prevent ourselves from sliding back into it, we need to deal with both.

Many approaches to stress relief focus on how to deal with stress: learning how to relax, how to regulate your nervous system, how to calm your thoughts, how to breathe, meditate, or slow down. All of that matters. I teach it. I practice it. And I truly believe it is essential. But here is the issue: all of these techniques:

• Add more to your to do list.
• Feed into the impicit assumtion that if you only knew how to perfectly manage your stress, you would be able to handle all stressors life throws at you.

I often fall prey to this myself, and this is, according to Oliver burkeman, a flawed assumption that only leads to more pressure and stress:

• Oliver Burkeman in: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

So this January, instead of just adding more to the to-do list, how about we disillusion ourselves of the idea that if we just manage ourselves better, we can handle everything? How about we make some choices not about what to add to the to do list, but what to remove from the to-do list?

This blog, is about how to remove unnecessary stressors. Stressors that make up the bulk of our time and life, yet we mindlessly add them to our never-ending list of things without questioning whether they are a good idea, or, if we do question them, finding it really hard to remove them.

Why January Is a Terrible Month for Adding More

January is usually framed as a fresh start. A clean slate. A moment to “get back on track.” So we add a new diet, a gym routine, a morning ritual, a productivity system, a relaxation tool, an ice bath… More discipline and more goals and more structure. And don’t get me wrong. I think its a good idea to set some health goals, start fresh with something you are enthusiastic about, and have a month of momentum to start a new thing you know is good for you. The only thing I want you to think about first is:

• What needs to go?

What do I need to stop doing if I want to have the space and capacity for the new thing?

Because here’s the paradox: you can’t add calm to a system that is already overloaded. That’s why, in burnout recovery, I always say that the very first step is giving yourself permission to rest. To not do more breathwork and yoga and therapy. But to first build actual space between tasks. Space where you learn to achieve nothing. I’ve written about that in more detail in a blog called The Thing That Is Keeping You From Taking Rest. Without giving yourself permission to rest, every other step in your recovery, including your health practices, becomes another task to perform “correctly”, and will create more stress.

Once you have given yourself permission to rest, its time to actually create space to rest. And for that, we need to remove stuff.

So. Consider for a moment:

• What am I carrying that I don’t actually need to carry?
• And how can I lighten my load of things (stressors) that I am carrying?

If you are in need of an embodied practice to learn how to do this, you can find it here.

Not All Stressors Are Bad — But Not All Are Necessary

Here’s something important: the goal is not to remove all stressors. That would be unrealistic and, honestly, undesirable. Stressors give life texture, meaning, challenge, growth. Caring about things that matter to you creates stress. Loving people creates stress. Being engaged in the world creates stress. The problem is not stressors in general. The problem is unexamined, unchosen, and unnecessary stressors.

Stressors that come from habit, identity, guilt, fear, a desire to avoid and distract, or a sense of over-responsibility. Stressors that are driven by parts of us that equate worth with usefulness, rest with laziness, saying no with selfishness, or rest with numbing ourselves out through addictions. In other words: stressors we didn’t consciously choose.

Internal Family Systems: The Parts of You That Seeks Out Stress

I integrate Internal Family Systems Therapy into my practice (If You want to Read more about IFS, please read my blog about IFS). From an Internal Family Systems perspective, it’s often not “you” who keeps adding more.

It’s a part of you, or several parts of you. Parts that feel responsible for everything and everyone. Parts that believe things will fall apart if they don’t stay vigilant. Parts that learned, very early on, that being needed was a way to belong. Parts that feel safer when they are busy than when things get quiet. Parts that want to add adventure to your life to stay distracted from feeling your feelings. In other modalities of psychologies we would call these parts coping mechanisms, system modes, patterns, or schemas.

Your parts have good intentions. They are a collection of thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors that are there to keep you alive and try to protect you from being floaded with super intense emotions. The thing is, if we don’t get curious about them and why they do what they do, they end up designing a life that is constantly overstimulating and unsustainable.

One of the most helpful questions you can ask is not “How do I manage my stress better?” but:

• Which part of me keeps saying yes to this?
• What is it afraid would happen if I didn’t?

Very often, removing stressors is less about time management and more about working with responsibility, identity, control, and distraction.

Let me give you an example. One of my biggest stressors today, is Instagram. I need it for work, which is why I am on it. But it constantly pulls my attention, and feeds the part of me that wants to be distracted from difficult feelings in my relationship (which are inevitable because we are raising a young child), and, for example, doing hard stuff like writing. There is a part of me that wants to explore novelty. This part is super useful when it helps me plan travel, search for the best resources for this blog, and explore new yoga sequences, but it's not so useful when it keeps me hooked on an app that takes me away from actual presence. Getting to know this part of me helps me to be compassionate with myself, and understand the deeper layers of why a certain stressor pulls me in.

If you want to know more about the parts of you that keep annoying stressors in your life, you can join me on my next free live Insight timer event. For all onging events, check my Insight timer profile.

From To-Do Lists to To-Don’t Lists

Instead of asking “What do I want to achieve this year?”, I want to invite you to explore a different question:

• What am I no longer willing to do?
• Which simple rule will I create to hold my boundary?

A to-don’t list can be surprisingly clarifying. For example, if you find yourself running other peoples’ errands the whole day and never getting to your own core tasks: Not checking email first thing in the morning might be a powerful to don’t. If you find yourself unable to wind down at the end of the day, not consuming news late at night, not consuming news at all, or only consuming news in paper format, might help.

If you find yourself overthinking social interactions over and over in your head, not taking responsibility for other people’s emotions might be a good general rule to repeat in your head (this one is on my to don’t list for this year).

If you feel overloaded with decisions all day, ask yourself this instead: how much information am I feeding my brain that I did not consciously choose? Many of us live in a near-constant state of input, not because we need it, but because it’s there. Apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, email, Slack, and YouTube don’t just inform you. They quietly demand attention, emotional energy, and decisions, all day long. Deleting just one of these might have a huge effect on your stress levels.

The Have Done List

While the to don’t list is a tool you might use once every year, or once every 3 months, there is another, more daily practice that really helps me with feeling like I have accomplished something in a day.

I’ve found it incredibly helpful to shift attention away from everything that’s not done yet (which inevitably creates the feeling that I am always behind and never doing enough), and toward what is already happening. Just like the practice of gratitude can shift your focus from what you wish you’d have in order to become happy, towards being happy with what you already have, and in doing so, creating your own happiness from the same circumstances merely through a frame shift: creating a have done list can do exactly the same.

So what I do at the end of every day (or, I try to do, at least when I notice I start to feel like I am never doing enough), is I take 5 minutes to write down everything I have done that day. And not just colossal things. Small thing that matter to me. Here are some things that are on that list:

• Ask a question
• Catch early Daylight
• Take a Break
• On the Mat (which can mean either meditation, yoga, or breathwork)
• Make it easier for myself
• Forgive someone
• Hug someone
• Listen
• Ask for help

I keep a simple weekly overview where I can mark what I’ve done. Not to optimize myself, but to see myself in the moment, as opposed to in some idealized future.

For each of my core values (Curiosity, Health, Connection), I have about 10 behaviors I do almost each day or at least once a week, that I can simply tick of at the end of my day. Doing this always leaves me with a sense of fulfillment and pride for doing all these tiny things that make me who I wish to be. And it is so much more important than the measurable results that everyone gets to see.

Behavioral Design: Effectively designing stressors out of your life

The last part, and this is even more important, is how to effectively design the stressor out of your life. Because it is one step to say: I am not allowing instagram to distract me anymore. Its a whole nother step to then adhere to it. If you have found this blog useful, but you don’t know how to put all this into practice: take the next step, and join me end of this month, on a free live coaching event that takes you through all these steps and sets you up for a 2026 with fewer stressors, more focus, and more fulfilment.

Join my free live coaching session on Insight Timer here

Doing Less Is Not Giving Up

One of the insights I deeply appreciate from thinkers like Oliver Burkeman is that the attempt to “get on top of life (or on top of our health)” is often the very thing that keeps us stressed. There will always be more to do than you can do. More information than you can process. More needs than you can meet. Peace doesn’t come from finally catching up. It comes from choosing what is worthy of your attention, and what isn’t. It's about choosing what, and who, matters. And what, and whom doesn’t, or at least not enough to keep you up at night.

Removing stressors is not about shrinking your life. It’s about making space for the parts of it that actually nourish you. In my upcoming class and Insight Timer events, we’ll explore this more experientially. We’ll work with identifying what you’re carrying, what you’re ready to put down, and how to design days that support your nervous system instead of constantly challenging it.

If you are curious how to unstress yourself, find my free mini-course The Recovery Solution here.