Saying "No" unless it's "Hell Yeah!"
In my previous blog post, I wrote about 2018 being a year of saying "no" unless it's a "hell yes". Hopefully the video below explains this concept.
To quote from Derek Sivers blog post:
When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say “no.”When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say “HELL YEAH!”
Originally, I felt that there needed to be a complicated formula or set of criteria to work through to determine if something is worth doing.
How much work would be involved?
What would be the time commitment?
Would there be an end date to my involvement or was I signing up for an ongoing commitment?
As part of my holiday reading, I am currently reading Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris. In one of the sections, Kyle Maynard talks about his criteria for deciding if something is worth doing. He begins by sharing a story of how his team went about hiring new staff. He instructed those recruiting to rate possible employees on a scale of 1-10; however, they couldn't use the number 7 in their ratings. He continues by saying:
It immediatly dawned on me how many invitations I was receiving that I would rate as a 7 - speeches, weddings, coffees, even dates. If I thought something was a 7, there was a good chance I felt obligated to do it. But if I had to decide between a 6 or an 8, it's a lot easier to quickly determine whether or not I should even consider it.
I'm going to pilot this as my criteria for saying "no".
Whilst making the decision to say no doesn't seem too hard, what I need to work on further is the process of saying no. I really suck at this. Again, Tribe of Mentors features several letters to Tim from people he approached to be included in his book but who, for whatever reason, declined his offer. (He also discussed this further in a podcast episode titled "How to Say No".)
In order for me to better develop this goal, I'm going to commit to the following actions:
Develop a "saying no" email template to use when asked to take on new projects.
Developing a script and strategies to say no when speaking with others.
What criteria do you apply when deciding to taking on new tasks or projects?
How do you go about "saying no" to others?