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Things You Don’t Have to Do


There is a fun page on Milan Cvitkovic’s site titled Things you’re allowed to do.

The contents of the page are exactly what you might expect given the title: it is a list of things you are allowed to do. Milan’s page resonates because while many of the items on his list are obvious, it’s easy to forget you can do them. 

This page is almost the inverse. It’s a list of things you are allowed to not do. I’m writing it because I sometimes hear people tell me that they “have to” do some of the things on the list below, and I’m skeptical whether that’s true. And because, in my view, it’s quite helpful to know what you don’t need to do.

First, some simple criteria. The items on the list below are things that:

  • You may do today (or may one day do).
  • The world, friends, society at large, etc. may have told you that you need to do.
  • You may benefit from remembering you don’t have to do.

I recommend that you take the title of this page semi-literally. It’s possible that not doing some of the things on this list might be difficult or unoptimal for you. So maybe you should do some of these things!

  • Read the news
  • Use AI
  • Text people
  • Care about the political/social views of your coworkers
  • Take photos and videos
  • Have a daily routine
  • Make a resume
  • Attend social events that don’t sound fun
  • Take your steak out of the fridge 15 minutes before cooking it
  • Care about (or take pride in) the country you live in
  • Have an opinion
  • Use language like ‘circle back’, ‘seamless’, and ‘enterprise-grade’
  • Own a smartphone
  • Comment on social media posts, even if they are really annoying
  • Finish the media (books, movies, etc.) that you start
  • Have goals
  • Decide whether or not any god(s) exist
  • Pretend you actually know a lot about wine
  • Care a lot about every product you buy
  • Be perfectly consistent
  • Research before you travel somewhere (this and this for more)
  • Have a ‘five-year-plan’
  • Travel
  • Watch T.V. shows, even the good ones
  • Have ‘project kickoff meetings’
  • Be the main character all of the time
  • Accept the first appointment slot or meeting time your doctor/coworker/etc proposes
  • Care about other people’s motivations for their choices
  • Argue with people
  • Pay attention to every single global conflict
  • Vote
  • Take other people’s advice
  • Have a thorough set of political beliefs
  • Keep track of vanity metrics (how many books you read, miles you run, etc.)
  • Have a LinkedIn
  • Work hard at a job you don’t enjoy
  • Use slow official channels when you have a problem (you could email someone directly)
  • Be rational about everything
  • Go to therapy (if you don’t feel that you need it)
  • Get a college degree
  • Be right
  • Complain
  • Live in a city
  • Have a lot of friends
  • Catch up with somebody just because they want to catch up
  • Sleep for 8 hours during the night
  • Things you don’t want to do

If you have any other items to add to the list, email us.

Author’s note: We’d like to re-iterate that the title of this page is quite literal. It may be very difficult, or at minimum unwise, for some people to stop doing some of the items on this list. So please take it with a grain of salt.

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