No to Everything Else
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
I took some time off work during the Thanksgiving holiday after grinding on a work project for a really long time. I’ve found myself at a point over the last six months where I just don’t feel effective and needed to figure out why.
During my quiet time this morning, I picked up "Hell Yeah or No" by Derek Sivers again. I bought the physical book a couple months ago with a plan to finish it quickly. But, as I tend to do, I read about 10 pages and then set it aside, telling myself I’ll get back to it eventually.
As I was powering through the book’s anecdotes, one jumped off the page and grabbed my attention.
“Hell yeah or no” is a filter you can use to decide what’s worth doing. But this is simpler and more serious. This is a decision to stop deciding. It’s one decision, in advance, that the answer to all future distractions is “no” until you finish what you started. It’s saying yes to one thing, and no to absolutely everything else.
I struck me that I’ve been saying yes far too often again. I’ll get a great idea for a project and dive head first into it, while having a half-dozen similar projects already in the works.
There are also commitments to others I’ve said yes to that I don’t want to show up for anymore. I have a bad habit of volunteering for something without thinking it through and it eventually becomes a drain on my energy.
What I need to do is focus on the “one big thing for now,” and only that thing until it’s finished. Everything else new is a hard no. There are still those commitments I have to show up for, but I don’t have to put 100% effort into them until the one big thing is done.
The challenge now is to figure out what that one big thing is.