How to keep your Models small?

Have a look at the God Object episodes here https://laracasts.com/series/whip-monstrous-code-into-shape/episodes/4 and https://laracasts.com/series/whip-monstrous-code-into-shape/episodes/5

Okay. This is where I shine. My models are usually very clean. If models have couple of relationships, I keep them in a model, usually if I have 10+ relationships, I'll extract them into App\Relationships\UserRelationships trait or something similar. Custom queries go into their specific file (App\Repositories\Users, or App\Queries\Users), observers go into their own classes. Same goes with custom factories (when I need more than Model::create), or any heavy logic (user avatar goes into Services\Avatar class, and $user->avatar() just returns a new instance of the Avatar service class).

Regarding imports, if you have like a service class called Markdown located in App\Services and you're using it only in one place in your model (class) within App namespace, there is no need to import App\Services\Markdown, I usually just reference relative path to the class: Services\Markdown, one line less in use imports :)

So all in all, models usually contain logic that operate on a single instance, such as $post->publish, $user->confirm, scopes and relationships.