Rule #1: Default to “no”
In order to have Agency and maximize Impact, you must have control over how you use your days.
Yet many of us surrender that control through overeager agreement — saying “yes” to prospective employers, “yes” to volunteer opportunities, “yes” to social engagements, “yes” to coffee (and a scone) in the name of networking.
The more agreeable our nature, the more likely it is that “yes” is our default setting. After all, we don’t want to disappoint and we don’t want to miss out, and the unspoken social contract bids us to say “no” as seldom as possible, lest we be banished from the tribe.
Nevertheless, each “yes” has an opportunity cost measurable in minutes and hours — time used for someone else’s ends that has been permanently reallocated away from service to our personal mission, never to be reclaimed. We’ve taken our most limited resource and given it away (likely with limited consideration). Each default “yes” also removes the possibility of modification or negotiation of the original proposal; we’ve acceded the details in full without considering the possibility of modifying them to meet our needs.
The zero-sum nature of time and the opportunity cost of each “yes” illuminates a lovely flip side, one in which every “no” means minutes and hours preserved. When we politely and conscientiously decline, we increase the amount of time we have at our sole disposal — which we can then use to maximize our Impact on the world. We retain our time for that which we should be most focused upon (and it’s rarely a scone).
Default to “no.”
READ ALL THE RULES OF TIME
