Moderating Yes

“Yes.” A small word, just 3 letters. Yet, it can have lasting benefits or consequences, depending on the circumstances.

It’s so easy to say yes to a new task, with the unbridled optimism and the feeling of immense joy when you envision yourself having successfully completed it. The praises people sing of you, the glory of tackling this behemoth of a project, and the fame you already begin to relish before even having started.
It’s all so easy to get swept up in these things and forget the true costs of that yes. The stress, the workload, having to overwork yourself, balancing multiple projects, the late nights, the early mornings, the deadlines, and the list can go on.

What if, saying yes, actually takes more than you think it does? What if taking more things on actually drains you? It’s very easy to imagine yourself as the person who can tackle anything in their path and come out successful on the other side. But have you really considered the pain and effort this will demand of you, along with the other things you already have going on in your life? An even broader question is, will this task help you fulfill your vision, help you become the person you wish to be?

Resource Drain

One thing remains constant with each yes – resources, mental and physical, get locked.

You’ve said yes to more things than you could handle, at some point in your life. I know I’ve done it, more times than I’d like to admit. What happens each time? You feel drained, your attention stretched in multiple directions, you find it difficult to allocate sufficient time to each project, and even when you do, you end up having to compromise on something. This keeps going until either you’re forced to give up on some (or all) of the tasks you confidently took on, or you have pushed yourself beyond your limits and managed to complete all the tasks, but have compromised somewhere. Maybe not a compromise on the quality of your work, but a compromise of your health instead.

Why does this happen? You’ve planned it all out after all, and you even made sure you had sufficient time to do all of these tasks well.

Planning Fallacy

Planning fallacy is a term coined by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, which refers to the tendency to underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions, while overestimating the benefits. We end up imagining best case scenarios and ignore past evidence of how long similar tasks usually take, which leads us to believe we can fit more into our schedules than is realistically possible.

A good example of this, is software development. This is something I have personally come across and seen happen. You start nearing the end of a project, and then you think to yourself that there’s only 10% left, and this should be done in no time. So you overestimate the ease of completing the last 10%, and in doing so, forget to account for bugs, upcoming complexities and even if you do, you discount the time and effort it takes to complete this (a form of optimism bias), simply because you have the current confidence from having completed a large chunk of the project.

This is not limited to software development, and can be seen in a vast majority of things, including personal errands, working out, studying for exams, etc.

Save Time – Say No

“No.” A smaller word, which can have just as much of a positive or negative impact on your life, depending on how you use it.

There are lots of examples out there which emphasise the importance of saying no.
Steve Jobs refused to have a lot of products when he came back into Apple in 1997, and brought down the product line to just 4 items. He even refused to license Mac OS to other hardware makers, despite immense pressure, in order to maintain a tight Apple ecosystem. Shonda Rhimes, the writer of Grey’s Anatomy, refused lucrative deals that did not allow her creative freedom and wanted to control her storytelling. Serena Williams – the winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles – skipped tournaments in order to protect her health and longevity. Warren Buffett is famous for his “20 slot rule” where he says that you only have 20 opportunities to invest in your lifetime, so you end up saying no to everything. George Lucas refused to direct the prequel trilogy of Star Wars for a long time, as he wanted creative freedom and also needed time to recover from the original trilogy. Toni Morrison, the famous Nobel Prize winning author, often refused public appearances or interviews that she felt were superficial or didn’t respect the depth of her literary contributions. Derek Sivers, Oprah Winfrey, J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, and the list can go on.

All of these examples show that saying no is a very important and crucial part in order to maintain your path to the vision that you want to achieve.

It frees up the resources you need, in order to complete the tasks that really matter and allow you to position yourself better in your endeavours, both personal and professional.

It is essential when it comes to fulfilling the vision you see for yourself, to becoming the person you wish to become.

Say no. Be more picky. Filter things out, over and over again. And you’ll find yourself more energised, determined and prepared to tackle the tasks that really matter.