Less = More

The idea for this podcast came from an unexpected place.

The other day I was walking into Target when I overheard a woman talking with her husband and son. During their conversation, she said, “Less is more.” A few moments later, she said it again.

It caught my attention because those three simple words carry a powerful message. In today’s world, we’re constantly told to do more, buy more, learn more, and achieve more. Yet many of the happiest, healthiest, and highest-performing people have learned the opposite. Less is often more.

It reminded me of a story about former NHL player Dean Kennedy. Dean once told me that his goal wasn’t to play 15 or 20 years in professional hockey. He simply wanted to play 10 years in the NHL. That was his focus. He wasn’t distracted by everything that might happen after that. He committed to one meaningful goal, worked relentlessly toward it, and achieved it.

Sometimes we try to accomplish so much that we end up accomplishing very little. A healthy mindset isn’t about adding more to your life. It’s about identifying what matters most and giving it your full attention.

Here are my Top 10 Reasons Why Less Is More:

1. More focus. When you focus on fewer things, you do them better.
2. Less overwhelm. Too many goals create confusion. Simplicity creates clarity.
3. Better execution. Success comes from consistently applying a few key habits.
4. Higher quality. Doing fewer things well beats doing many things poorly.
5. More consistency. Simple routines are easier to maintain over time.
6. Better decisions. Fewer choices reduce decision fatigue and improve judgment.
7. Greater confidence. Small wins build momentum and strengthen belief in yourself.
8. Less stress. Eliminating unnecessary commitments creates more mental energy.
9. More meaningful progress. Mastery comes from repetition, not constantly chasing the next idea.
10. Lasting success. The highest performers don’t try to do everything. They identify what matters most and commit to doing it exceptionally well.

Remember, the goal isn’t to do more. The goal is to do what matters most. When you remove the distractions and focus on what truly moves the needle, you’ll often discover that less really is more.

Continue Your Mindset Journey

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Explore the Healthy Mindset AI Podcast for practical mindset strategies, mindfulness techniques, breathing exercises, performance insights, and self-coaching tools designed for athletes, leaders, and workplace professionals.

The Healthy Mindset AI Platform combines targeted assessments, personalized growth plans, digital mindset tools, accountability support, and 24/7 access to the Digital Mind Mike Hartman to help you build confidence, strengthen focus, improve consistency, and perform at your best.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset AI Podcast, where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment applications, healthy mindset course, meditation, and goal setting technique for the athlete and workplace athlete. We're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset AI podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Welcome back to another episode. And it was the holiday weekend, and I was walking into Target, and I see a very nice family ahead of me. And as I'm walking in, she mentioned to maybe her husband and her son that less is more. And I said, Oh, I like that. And then she mentioned it again. So I was thinking, I'm gonna do this podcast on less is more. So I want to thank the very nice uh lady, I believe her name is Erin. I approached her and I asked her, Hey, can I use your line today, less is more, in one of my podcasts? She said, sure. So here we go today, less is more, and I've also learned this uh way over the years. I mentioned before that one of my closest friends was the assistant general manager of a major league baseball team. And he would tell me a lot of young athletes would go in the batting cage for hours, but what they were doing is they were hurting themselves because they were doing too much. Sometimes too much wears you out, you develop bad habits, you swing changes, and you just do things that you typically would not do. Same in corporate America. Sometimes I've worked with people and they say, I want to be in the office at 7 a.m. I'm gonna get so much more done. And really, they might not even get as much done. Sometimes they put more on their plate. So I'm gonna give 10 reasons why I believe less is more, and I want to thank the very nice uh lady that was walking uh into Target, so I appreciate that. And one of the things that really I believe helped me why I always believed less was more, it was more focus. So I was in the coaching business for 20 years doing the assessments, working with people, but I would use so many different assessments. Now I use instead of 20 assessments that we did years ago, we use two because I want to have more of a focus, so I use one for athletes and I use one for the workplace professional. I believe when I have fewer things that I have to worry about and fewer things that I have to explain, it's much better for me. So you could think of maybe ways that you could focus on different things. Uh, one thing we knew as a professional athlete, I was told this by Jimmy Devolano, who was the general manager of the Detroit Red Wings when I was 18 years old. He said, in order to make it to the highest level, you have to do a lot of things really well, but you have to do one thing exceptionally well. So I learned that from him. It was something I learned at 18 years old. You can't be the best at everything, you have to do something really well, unless you're Bo Jackson back in the day and he played baseball and football, and there's a few outliers out there for sure, but for the most part, focusing on that one thing that you do really well and be the best at it. The next thing is less overwhelm. I felt when I was overwhelmed with things, it would set me back. Uh, too many goals, too many notes. In the old days, they would talk about journaling, and I would write on a full piece of paper back 20 years ago when I started journaling. I was writing all of these different things down, didn't even cover. I mean, I it wasn't even like I was getting a third of them completed. So sometimes when we overwhelm ourselves with so many things, we're actually setting ourselves back. And I that's one thing that I've always taken to heart is don't do too much, don't get overwhelmed, do what you could do and do the best at it, like I mentioned earlier. Better execution is another one. Success comes from constantly applying different things or even being consistent with things like better execution. So, as an athlete, I remember when I was young and I would work on, let's say, pucks around the boards, uh, because a big part of my job was to play defensive hockey, and that puck would come around the boards. I had to get it out not nine out of ten times, I had to get it out ten out of ten times. And I once had a coach, Bob Hartley, who I really thought is one of the best development coaches I've ever had. And I heard him say back in uh many years ago, he was telling our team in Hershey, Pennsylvania, he said, you do whatever you can to stop that puck and make sure it gets out. I think it bounced over a player's stick, and the player said, Well, it took a bounce. Well, did you put your body in front of in front of the puck? What did you do to make sure that puck that you know you you control that puck and you make a good play, you make a good second pass or you get it out. So that's another example to me of you know having this consistency in what you're doing and doing it well. So the other thing I want to talk about here is better decisions, making really good choices, choosing to make good choices in what you're doing, whether it's a business choice, whether it's something that's an athlete, making good choices is extremely important because one bad choice could set you back. Now, initially, it looks like wow, I'm gonna I'm gonna get ahead right now, but what happens later? I've seen a lot of players do that over time. They over-train or overuse and they think they're making good decisions, but they're not, they're really setting themselves back. And the same within the corporate uh the corporate world. It seems like sometimes that, well, I'm not gonna start trying to create better habits for myself today. I think I'll start next week. I have a big week, I gotta get this done. But what happens is you end up getting tired, you get exhausted, and you end up setting yourself back. So making better decisions to me is extremely important. And another one I'll talk about is greater confidence. Small wins builds momentum. I've mentioned that on so many of our podcasts here that little wins are important. Think think about doing these little wins and trying to get ahead by doing it. The win of the day, even it could be something small. Hey, I had a win. What was your win of the day today? What did you do that was a win? And you could celebrate that win, but then you get ready next time. I mean, all the cliches, and even in sports, you never get too high, you never get too low, you stay neutral, but I still believe you could celebrate your wins. And I recently had a win. I recently mentioned to many people before that uh my story, which was in a couple of the most recent podcasts about having sepsis, and now I feel myself. I could exercise again, I could do things that I was doing before where I was struggling. And what I did though, I'd be the first to admit it, and because we all make mistakes, coaches need a coach. And what I did initially was I came out of the gate and I went a little bit too hard the first day I was allowed to start exercising, where I should have done it very slow. And what did I do? I started going a little bit more than I should have done, and I could look myself in the mirror and I would say, Why did I do that? And those are things that we could work on. So now I have a little small win, I'm going slowly with it, I'm ready to get back. So to me, those are high wins. So, and the other thing is is having really more meaningful progress, like like they call it mastery, they call it repetition. Uh, I once heard repetition is your best coach continuously doing it, but then I mentioned earlier too, too much could set you back. But when you do a lot of things and you practice it and you continuously practice it, you're gonna get better. And another thing, what we don't want to do is the the mastery is great, but always comparing. So one thing is okay, I'm gonna compare myself to the next person. We don't want to do that. I mentioned earlier that less is more, that doesn't mean we have to always compare ourselves to the the person next to us. Like, oh, what are they doing? How can I do it better? Work on yourself, work on for the betterment of you, getting yourself better every day, and more meaningful progress is to me important, so it's it has to be for a reason. I was talking to a young athlete, a hockey player, and they told me they're gonna shoot 2,000 pucks. And I said, Well, I love your attitude, great attitude, but I don't think 2,000 pucks, like you can't just put a number on it. You have to sometimes have that ability, so I mentioned before is recover because one thing you don't want to do is you don't want to develop bad habits, and high performers don't try to do everything. Some of the best people I know, uh, my friend from Wells Fargo, that I think he had over 700 people report to him. Obviously, he had people uh that were below him and where he was, but he was one of the highest performers I've ever met, and he would always try not to do too much. They identified what mattered most. So I would ask him, I said, Boy, how do you manage all this? He says, Well, I have a good team of people, and I have to identify what's really important and really focus in on that. And the other thing is commit to doing it. So if you're an athlete, that commitment is so important, and you don't have to do so many different things. So if I would ask you, uh what is your summer plan as an athlete, and you list off about 30 different things. Uh, you know, I love your enthusiasm, I love your drive, your determination, except that's not gonna cut it. Do something very well, do something to the best of your ability and keep practicing at it and keep practicing. That doesn't mean you don't work on other things. I don't want to send the wrong message, but what can you do well? There's been so many great players in in the NHL that I played with that did things really, really well. I could think of players like Dean Kennedy, and most people are gonna say, Who? I had a friend, Dean Kennedy, uh for the Buffalo Sabres, and I played in Winnipeg with him. We were actually traded together, and he made sure, I asked him, like, what do you what do you focus on? You know, I was I was a young player at the time, and he was talking to me, like a mentor, uh big farmer, uh mentor type guy, and he says, Listen, do something very well. Don't go out of your way to make a hit. Make sure, you know, when when you're gonna be physical, make sure you line up the player, don't go out of your way because you're gonna put us more in a jam. What happens is now you go out of your way and and you might make the hit. Now they're coming back three on two on us because you did something that you shouldn't have done. So focus on doing a little bit less, which is gonna be more. Like I said, less is more. Uh, one thing I loved about Dean was he was a great steady defenseman, and he told me his plan. So we talk about having a plan through this. I'm gonna throw Dean into the equation here. So Dean Kennedy would tell me years like when I was playing with him, he says, I'm only gonna play in the NHL for 10 years if I last. And I think he played 10 or 11 years. I said, Why do you put a limit on it? He says, Because Mike, uh, I think he was a first-round pick to the New York Rangers and then got traded to LA. Uh, then he went to Buffalo, and I think he even gone back to LA. He was in Winnipeg. He bounced around. He says, I'm gonna be, my goal is to be the best steady defenseman, block shots, do everything I can to help the team play physical, but I'm gonna go back and work on the farm. I said, Dean, what if you could play 20 years? He says, I don't want to. I'm gonna play. My plan is I'm gonna give everything I have, and I'm going to play 10 years. That's my plan, no matter what happens, and I'm going on the farm, and he did. That's exactly what he did. I never forgot that. In fact, I recently talked to him uh on a very sad occasion, and I don't want to get into it too. His wife passed away, and it's his wife Tammy, who I really respected that family. And I told him, I said, Dean, you put an impact on me that you said something years ago that I even use in my own coaching. He says, Oh, what did I do? I said, You told me you're gonna go back to Alberta and you're gonna work on the farm no matter what after 10 years. And he was even the captain of the Winnipeg Jets. He even went to his hometown in Edmonton, and what did he do? He did exactly what he said. So a big part of it was he says, You know, Hardy, that was my nickname. I only need it's the same thing. Less is more. I'm only gonna play 10 years, that's all I need, and I'm gonna go back to doing what I'm doing. So I thought I would throw that little story in at the end. I hope this has helped you. Any question, please feel free to reach out, go to the go to our website, ask any questions, and have a great day until next time. And looking forward to doing more of these little tips. I'll be doing them from the car. And I want to thank the very nice family that was walking into Target because you made this episode uh a lot easier. You had me thinking about something. So thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset AI Podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program, or to get in touch with Mike, please visit our website, healthymindset.ai. Thanks again for listening, and we hope you'll join us again on the next episode of the Healthy Mindset AI Podcast. Until then, be well.