Use the -prune primary. For example, if you want to exclude ./misc:

 find . -path ./misc -prune -o -name '*.txt' -print

To exclude multiple directories, OR them between parentheses.

 find . -type d \( -path ./dir1 -o -path ./dir2 -o -path ./dir3 \) -prune -o -name '*.txt' -print

And, to exclude directories with a specific name at any level, use the -name primary instead of -path.

 find . -type d -name node_modules -prune -o -name '*.json' -print

This didn't work for me until I prefixed my local path wih ./, e.g. ./name. This distinction for find might not be obvious to the occasional find user. – sebkraemer

There is clearly some confusion here as to what the preferred syntax for skipping a directory should be.

GNU Opinion

To ignore a directory and the files under it, use -prune

From the GNU find man page

Reasoning

-prune stops find from descending into a directory. Just specifying -not -path will still descend into the skipped directory, but -not -path will be false whenever find tests each file.

Issues with -prune

-prune does what it's intended to, but are still some things you have to take care of when using it.

1. find prints the pruned directory.

• TRUE That's intended behavior, it just doesn't descend into it. To avoid printing the directory altogether, use a syntax that logically omits it.

  2. -prune only works with -print and no other actions.

• NOT TRUE. -prune works with any action except -delete. Why doesn't it work with delete? For -delete to work, find needs to traverse the directory in DFS order, since -delete will first delete the leaves, then the parents of the leaves, etc... But for specifying -prune to make sense, find needs to hit a directory and stop descending it, which clearly makes no sense with -depth or -delete on.

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My example:

  find -s . -path "./C*" -prune -o -name '*' -type d -maxdepth 2 -print