[November 2025] 🤘 How to cut tasks that waste your time (+ 3 updates)

Hey it’s Mica,

Over Thanksgiving I caught up with a longtime family friend who runs a small cabinet-making shop. He's been doing it for over 35 years and absolutely loves the craft but hates the business side. He has a few employees but does all the operation tasks himself (QuickBooks, spreadsheets, project quotes, answering phones, everything).

He's close to retirement and wants to keep doing woodwork but is considering closing down the business altogether.

As we talked through what he wants to do versus what’s draining him, I realized we were running an impromptu Start-Stop-Keep reflection.

It's the same exercise I’ve recently used to improve my own day-to-day work and with our teams at Referral Rock. So today, I'm sharing how we’ve used Start-Stop-Keep and how important the pre-work/preparation is.

And yes, we do have a few product updates aimed to help you “start” scheduled referral invites, “stop” manually sending reminders, and “keep” your HubSpot phone numbers in sync.

Let's dive in (and hope you “Keep” subscribing despite the bad dad jokes 😁😁),

-Mica
Head of Operations

📋 Run an Effective Start-Stop-Keep Exercise

It’s easy for day-to-day work to pile up and suddenly feel draining. A good self assessment can help you or your team get back on track by cutting what is no longer impactful + finding new ways to improve.

Running a Start-Stop-Keep reflection doesn't need to be complicated but I believe the pre-work is essential to finding the biggest opportunities to improve.

Self Reflection Exercise

Follow these steps to understand where you spend your time and what to prioritize.

Pre-Work:

1. Block 30-60 minutes for focused thinking (extend as needed)

2. Ask yourself “Where did I spend my time last week/month/quarter?”

3. Record your answers in a list or spreadsheet:

   • Activity/Initiative

   • Notes

   • Optional Fields (Frequency, Impact, Effort, Dependencies)

4. Stop writing once you feel like you’ve covered most of it or your time is up (it doesn’t have to be perfect and you can revisit it later)

5. Set a time the next day for your self-review (it’s important to let it all settle before you start fresh tomorrow)

Self-Review (the next day):

1. Read over and update your list as there are often missing items you didn’t think about in the moment

2. Go through your list and assign a “Start, Stop, or Keep Doing” label to each item

3. If you have a team, you can add fields like who can I delegate and train for this task + what are the next steps

Team Reflection Exercise

Team reflection creates alignment and ensures everyone understands priorities. It clarifies individual responsibilities and helps plan key initiatives.

Pre-Work:

1. Schedule a 60-90 minute meeting with your team

2. Send prep materials ahead of time:

   • Start-Stop-Keep questions (see examples 👇) & any spreadsheets, tasks, or material to read

   • Request submissions a few days before the meeting (gives you time to prepare)

3. Review the pre-work to understand submissions and guide the conversation

4. Prepare a centralized document that pulls together the key themes, patterns, etc.

The Meeting:

1. Frame the conversation (meeting goal, agenda, thank everyone for pre-work)

2. Present key themes and findings

3. Facilitate team discussion on topics of interest and differing opinions

4. Prioritize action items as a group (voting, stack ranking, or discuss until consensus)

5. Summarize next steps and assign owners

6. Send a recap and schedule any follow up tasks

Example Start-Stop-Keep Questions

Here are a few example questions that we use (pick the ones most relevant to your situation). I recommend you limit yourself to 2-3 in each category.

Questions to identify the highest impact opportunities:

• What would make next year 10X better?

• What would eliminate our biggest bottleneck?

• What are customers consistently asking for?

• What keeps coming up in team conversations?

• Where are our competitors succeeding that we're not?

• If we could only add one new initiative, what would create the most value?

Questions to find the low-value activities that drain resources:

• What are we doing just because "we've always done it this way"?

• If you had 20% less time/resources, what would you cut first?

• What projects took much longer than expected (and why)?

• What takes significant time but produces minimal engagement or results?

• What causes the most delays or adds little value?

• What activities make the team feel scattered or unclear on priorities?

Questions to identify your strengths and high ROI activities:

• What is currently working well that we're underinvesting in?

• What consistently delivers results with relatively low effort?

• What would we regret if we stopped doing it?

• What do customers specifically mention as valuable or unique about us?

• What energizes the team and plays to our natural strengths?

• What initiatives produced the best ROI this year?