Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
Doctor: "Then stop doing that."

Sometimes it's just best to stop what you've been doing because doing what you're doing isn't helpful anymore.

For example, I had clients who were still collecting fax numbers within the past couple of years, even though the broad use of faxes has been gone for many years. "Fax" was a field on the form, so why bother changing it?

And it might not just be data points that you should stop collecting. Maybe it's stopping certain processes (e.g., collecting demographic data during event registration that never gets used) or even completely stopping programs that are no longer relevant or successful.

The key to quitting is to always be looking for things to stop doing. Every time you execute a process, or collect an additional piece of data, or start planning the program again this year, stop and ask yourself: "Should we still be doing this?" Maybe the answer will be "no" and you can move on to something of higher value!

Consider quitting! You'll thank me!