This kind of confuses me the same way as Bleach.

If you knew you were going to be stopping soon, wouldn't it have made more sense to stop AT the time-skip and WITHOUT the huge filler arc?

Ending the series at the end of the Tenrou Island arc would have made a lot more sense.

Just like it would have made a lot more sense to end Bleach at the end of the Aizen arc.

And how it would have made WAY more sense to end the first Naruto series at the end of the Sasuke Retrieval arc instead of having 2 years of filler...