How To Create a To-Don’t List To Improve Your Productivity

The to-do list is a hallmark productivity tool—a log of personal or work tasks to help you focus on urgent action items. A list of to-do’s can help you reach your goals. But using one is not a surefire recipe for productivity. A 2025 Acuity Training survey found that of 33% of respondents who use a to-do list, only 20% feel their work is under control on a daily basis.

Writing a to-don’t list can help you identify unnecessary tasks and improve your time management by targeting your real priorities. Here’s an all-in-one guide to to-don’t lists.

What is a to-don’t list?

A to-don’t list is a productivity tool that specifically lists tasks, habits, or distractions you don’t want on your plate, in the interest of protecting your time and focus for high-impact work and reaching your core goals. A to-don’t list establishes boundaries around your time, ensuring your energy goes toward priorities that advance your business, like developing new products, networking with others in your industry, or reviewing customer feedback. This is particularly useful if you’re an entrepreneur, manage a wide range of tasks, or simply have a high degree of responsibility. 

“ There is a lot of organic chaos that comes with being an entrepreneur or a founder,” says Togethxr co-founder Jessica Robertson on the Shopify Masters podcast. Because entrepreneurs often wear multiple hats—CEO, marketer, customer support agent, janitor—they’re prone to attention creep, where focus drifts toward low-stakes, time-consuming tasks they should delegate or ignore. 

A to-don’t list clears lower-priority items off your plate so you can prioritize the things that matter most to your company, especially activities that directly benefit your customers. Jessica suggests deprioritizing anything that doesn’t align with the “North Star vision” that anchors you and your team.

Benefits of a to-don’t list

Whether you’re working toward a specific goal for your business or trying to achieve work-life balance, a to-don’t list can propel you forward. Here are key benefits:

• Reduced decision fatigue. A to-don’t list clarifies what not to spend your time or energy on each day. This includes making lower-stakes decisions that could be delegated to others on your team. Tasking yourself with fewer decisions can help you put more deliberate thought into the ones that remain on your plate.

• Greater productivity. Every item on your to-don’t list represents time you can invest into more productive ventures.

• Improved operational efficiency. Maintaining a to-don’t list regularly makes you evaluate routine tasks to determine whether they’re actually necessary. For example, you may have had a longstanding policy to review every expense item that employees submit, but if your to-don’t list includes not doing tasks that a computer can do more efficiently, you might delegate this work to an AI-powered application instead.

• Greater employee satisfaction. When employees are empowered to make decisions within their purview without needing to check about everything, they’re likely to feel more confident about their role and your faith in them; a to-don’t list can prevent you from stepping on the toes of other people’s remits. 

What to include on a to-don’t list

A to-don’t list is a beneficial method for flagging activities that don’t align with your highest-order business goals. These activities vary by business and industry. Here are possible to-don’t list entries if you work in ecommerce:

• Checking email first thing in the morning. Email can open the door to other people’s priorities dictating your day. This habit traps you in a reactive loop before you’ve had a chance to focus on your most essential goals.

• Saying yes to every meeting. Avoid meetings without a clear agenda or defined end time. If your presence is not required for project feedback, the meeting may belong on your to-don’t list.

• Manually entering data across systems. Copying information from one database to another—like from your ecommerce sales register to your accounting software—may be a task for automation software like Shopify Flow.

• Micromanaging competent employees. Your strongest performers don’t need you looking over their shoulders. Frequent check-ins can disrupt their momentum. Give your team autonomy—within clear guardrails—to manage their work effectively. 

• Multitasking during deep work. Research shows multitasking impedes productivity and can even dent performance on IQ tests. Commit to not checking notifications or taking quick calls when immersed in a project.

• Working without a break. Skipping lunch or foregoing breaks is a recipe for human error and burnout. A Slack Workforce Index study found that workers who took breaks throughout the day were 13% more productive and 43% more likely to manage work-related stress. Productivity is about energy management, not just time management.

• Providing on-demand support to everyone. While proactive support is a key customer support objective, being on-call 24/7 for every internal query prevents you from immersing yourself in your own work. Carve out time in your week for colleague and customer support, and save the rest to tackle high-level tasks.

• Striving for perfection on low-priority tasks. Not every internal memo or draft needs to be a masterpiece. Identify which tasks require 100% effort and which are perfectly acceptable at 80%.

• Bringing work home with you. Set aside defined blocks in your day devoted to your job, and enforce clear end times so you can focus on your personal life too. You don’t need to think about work while watching your kid’s sports game or while drifting off in bed. The goal is to work efficiently while on the job.

When to use a to-don’t list

• When your time is consumed by administrative work
• When your focus duration has noticeably decreased
• When building out your ecommerce store
• During a major sales event

A to-don’t list acts as a filter for all the daily micro-decisions that can quickly become overwhelming. “At the beginning, my list was so insanely long,” recalls Floof Cotton Candy owner Hannah Perry on the Shopify Masters podcast. “There was just no way of getting through it every day.” So she pared her workload down to just three priorities per day. “I got those three done instead of looking at everything that was really important to do,” she says. 

Here are scenarios where a to-don’t list can be an ecommerce lifesaver:

When your time is consumed by administrative work

If you find yourself spending hours on manual data entry—such as copying tracking numbers or updating inventory accuracy in a spreadsheet—it’s time to add it to your to-don’t list. Rather than getting bogged down in tedious tasks, choose integrated ecommerce apps or an all-in-one system that lets you sync data automatically. 

When your focus duration noticeably decreases

If task switching is draining your productivity, a to-don’t list can help you reclaim your attention. For example, if you use Shopify, commit to checking your Analytics dashboard no more than twice a day—maybe once in the morning and once at night. Constant refreshing of stats siphons your attention away from mission-critical work.

When building out your ecommerce store

When you’re building your website, it’s critical that it’s secure, working without glitches, and easy to navigate. The bells and whistles—apps, graphics, videos, etc.—can come later, and adding these right off the bat can impede progress and delay launch. You need to test every add-on to make sure it works, read app reviews before installing them, and check the mobile responsiveness of every new update. Doing this when you’re just starting out can overload your brain, team, and website. 

During a major sales event

When order volumes spike, it’s critical to focus on time-sensitive tasks, like order fulfillment, and deprioritize endeavors, like changing your brand aesthetics. 

In these cases, your to-don’t list should steer you away from projects that can wait until after the retail event. This includes holding off on new website development, logo changes, or other activities related to long-term initiatives. When big sales roll around—like Black Friday or Labor Day—focus all of your efforts on sales success, and circle back to development projects after the sale ends.

How to make and use a to-don’t list

1. Document how you spend your time
2. Identify “don’ts”
3. Divide your actions into “do” and “don’t” columns
4. Adopt a “to-don’t” mindset
5. Track your progress

To-do’s and to-don’ts aren’t perfect opposites—a to-don’t list focuses on eliminating unproductive habits, not the completion of tasks. Creating one begins with a review of how you typically spend your time. Here’s a simple guide:

1. Document how you spend your time

Using a sheet of paper, list every task you performed over the past three days.

2. Identify “don’ts”

Look for tasks you’re doing that don’t contribute to your bottom line or most important goals. Review your list and circle the items that drained your energy or caused task-switching fatigue (exhaustion caused by repeatedly jumping between different tasks). You may discover that certain routine tasks, like approving spending, are actually hurdles. If you’ve heard yourself complaining about a specific chore repeatedly, flag it as a friction point.

3. Divide your actions into “do” and “don’t” columns

Draw a line on a new piece of paper. On one side, keep your active to-do’s; on the other, add the items you want to forbid yourself from doing. For example, you might decide to delegate the day-to-day decision of what to post on social media to your head of marketing instead of OKing every video and reel. The point of this goal-setting is to create a hard boundary for your focus.

4. Adopt a “to-don’t” mindset

Treat a to-don’t list with the same respect you do a to-do list. Compared to a to-do list, you may find that this “negative” list is harder to follow because it requires breaking long-standing habits. Post your list where you can see and refer to it frequently and set periodic “to-don’t” reminders on your phone. 

5. Track your progress

Finally, review your progress at the end of each week. Did you stick to your boundaries? If you find a new distraction creeping in, add it to the list immediately. As your business scales, continue to refine this list, adding new “to-don’ts” that waste your time while removing items that no longer cause headaches.