When was the last time you said no to a great opportunity that was slightly outside your core business?
Or the last time you told a big client or prospect, “I’m sorry, we don’t provide that service.” Or the last time you told your team, “Amazing idea, but it’s not a priority.”
Do you say yes to almost everything?
As entrepreneurs, we do whatever it takes to win. We’re conditioned to say yes to opportunities and to meet the demands placed on us by our customers, investors, partners, teams, and even ourselves. Saying yes isn’t inherently a problem. The problem is that we often do it to our detriment.
Whether it stems from a fear of failure, a need to please or prove ourselves, or something else, the good news is that saying yes to everything is curable.
In Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, author Greg McKeown exposes the “yes” phenomenon and provides the antidote: Cut out the non-essentials and focus only on activities that bring real value. A non-essentialist thinks, “I’m all things to all people,” while an essentialist thinks, “Do less better.”
The results are clear: Essentialists make more profit, beat their competition, earn more promotions, get more sleep, have more satisfaction, and live healthier, more meaningful lives.
As EOS Implementers, we could have co-authored this book. We have a mantra that’s sometimes hard for our clients to swallow when they first hear it: LESS IS MORE.
We repeat those three words incessantly throughout the EOS process. It comes up in vision building, goal setting, and issue solving. We remind teams that if you do less better, you’ll go farther faster.
Warren Buffett said it best: “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
Never has this mindset been so critical for entrepreneurial businesses. With AI, supply chain realignments, inflation, and geopolitical instability all adding noise, it’s time to get crystal clear on the essential activities that will keep us in the game and set up to win.
Related Reading: Knowing When to Let Go
Less But Better: Your 2026 Planning Advantage
Keep this in mind as you’re doing your 2026 annual planning.
To make it easy, follow the same process we use with leadership teams:
- Get your leadership team in a room for a few hours and agree on the 3–7 most important goals to achieve by the end of 2026. Not the nice-to-haves. Not the maybes. Only the do-or-dies to keep you on track to achieving your long-term vision. This becomes your 1-Year Plan.
- Break those big goals down into 90-day priorities. We call these Rocks. Choose 3–7 Rocks for the Company, and 3–5 for each leader. Be disciplined about the number. Too many priorities means you’ll do none well.
- Execute for the next 90 days with intense focus, discipline, and accountability. Don’t get distracted. Check progress weekly. If something is off track, talk about it and solve it.
- Capture all the ideas and potential Rocks that didn’t make the cut. Put them on an Issues List. You’re not deleting them, just parking them. If they’re important, they’ll rise again next quarter.
Repeat this process every 90 days. At the end of the year, you’ll have found that you’ve said yes to the right things and gone farther, faster, and better.
The “less is more” mindset, coupled with the focus, discipline, and accountability that results from this process, is transformational.
When you look back at the end of 2026, you’ll be amazed how far you’ve come by doing less, better.
Discover the EOS Academy
Annual plans don’t fail for lack of ambition. They fail because teams drift from the few things that matter most. The EOS Academy was created to help entrepreneurial companies close that gap between clarity and execution. It gives leaders the tools, structure, and confidence to stay aligned and disciplined all year long.
Through short, actionable lessons built around real-world challenges, the EOS Academy helps leadership teams:
- Translate strategic goals into day-to-day focus
- Say no to low-value activity without losing momentum
- Create clarity across departments and roles
- Reinforce the practices that drive meaningful progress
- Build a culture that protects time, attention, and energy
It’s really designed to simplify execution, not add complexity, for teams who already know what matters and want to make sure their people stay focused on it. If your 2026 plan is bold, the EOS Academy helps make it doable one quarter at a time. Create your free account today.
