“Monday 5 Things” ….. Stop. Just Stop. …..
August 11th, 2025 by D. Paul Graham
Ever curious and always amused by the quirks of life, join D. Paul Graham each Monday for more M5T pondering.
Pickpocket, Photo by D. Paul Graham, Skopje Macedonia
I was in Macedonia, wandering through the Skopje city center with vendors hawking everything from cheap sunglasses to knockoff perfume. Beggars held children, some were just dolls, asking for money. It was one of those places where life spills gloriously into the street. It was messy, vibrant, and utterly magnetic for me and my camera.
That’s when I noticed them. A small group of children with an older man and woman behind a statue. At first, I thought it was a family moment. But the body language was different. The gestures were deliberate, rehearsed. The older man would point toward tourists, pantomime slipping a hand into a pocket or bag, and the kids would mimic the movement with uncanny precision. It wasn’t play. It was training.
Through the viewfinder, I caught the face of one boy who had sharp eyes and a serious expression. He saw me just before I pressed the shutter. In a signal recognized in any culture, he raised his hand and made a quick, sharp motion to stop.
I didn’t stop taking pictures, but coming across that image of the boy made me think through the word stop. Particularly those things that we should stop. This morning’s M5T wants to put a stop to a number of such things.
1. STOP BEING PAVLOV’S INBOX DOG. Your phone chirps. Your watch vibrates on your wrist. A banner slides across your computer screen. You don’t even think. You just react. No matter what you are doing. The result is that you’ve just put yourself at the mercy of someone else’s agenda. You’ve trained yourself to leap every time the bell rings, just like Pavlov’s pup in the experiment. But the truth is that instant replies aren’t respect. They’re control. That “urgent” email will still be urgent in 30 minutes. That text will survive without a blue bubble response in 10 seconds flat while you’re behind the wheel of your car. Protect your attention as a finite resource, measured not in minutes, but in meaning. Decide when you respond. Decide when you’re available. Otherwise, you’re not working on your life. You’re just taking orders from everyone else’s.
2. STOP SAYING YES TO THINGS & PEOPLE THAT DRAIN YOU. You get an invite. A request. A “quick favor.” You feel that awkward pressure to say yes because you don’t want to seem rude. But every “meh” yes is a time vampire. It sucks energy from the things you actually care about and replaces it with a calendar full of regret. For me, if it’s not a “hell yes!”, it’s already a no. Don’t delay the truth. Your time is a room with only so many chairs. Every seat you give away shapes the audience of your life. Be selective and careful with who you ask to sit with you. They shouldn’t get a chair just because they ask.
3. STOP WALKING INTO MEETINGS BLIND. No agenda? No point. No point? No attendance. A meeting without a plan is basically a hostage situation where lukewarm coffee and stale donuts are your only consolation. Meaningless meetings are a black hole that swallow time and spits out frustration. Before you say yes, ask: “What’s the objective?” If no one can answer, then that meeting is merely a mirage. It looks like work but just wastes time. Meetings should create action, enable decisions, and move things forward. If they don’t, avoid them like the plague. If you’re calling the meeting, respect your people enough to have a plan before you steal their time. Meetings should be engines that generate action, guiding decisions, and drive momentum. Momentum to decide, to act, and to advance. They should turn talk into motion and motion into progress. If a meeting doesn’t create action or clarity, it’s just noise.
4. STOP SCROLLING LIKE A ZOMBIE. It starts with “I’ll just check my Instagram.” Suddenly, it’s an hour later, your thumb is numb, you may have erased your fingerprint, and you’ve consumed 147 pieces of content you don’t even care to recall. You’ve been in a dopamine loop. Cheap hits of crack-like novelty that feel like activity but deliver absolutely nothing. Social media is like potato chips for the brain. Tasty at first, addictive in the long run, but empty of nutrition. Instead, give your mind a full meal of a book, a long-form article, or a deep-dive video on something you actually want to master. Your brain craves substance. Stop feeding it scraps.
5. STOP KILLING HOURS OF TIME. We’ve all done it. You sit down for “just one” episode, and before you know it, you’ve burned through half a season. It’s even worse when you wasted an hour deciding what you wanted to watch. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, but when you binge without balance, you’re making a trade you can’t get back. Time spent with nothing of value in return. Swap just one binge hour for a skill hour. Watch a documentary instead of a sitcom rerun. Learn a language instead of another crime drama. Learn to cook. Read a chapter instead of letting autoplay choose for you. These swaps seem small but stack them for a year and you’ve built yourself into a different person.
Here’s to a week of putting a stop to things and people that are negative in your life. To recognizing that stopping isn’t laziness. Stopping creates the power to live a life that is true to yourself, not to the expectations or demands of others.
© 2025 D. Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved
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