The One Question That Changed How I Think About Opportunities

How many things have you said no to today?

Several years ago, I saw an interview with Apple’s former chief designer, Jony Ive, in which he talked about the lessons he had learned from Steve Jobs.

One of those lessons was about focus and asking, “How many things have I said no to today?”

Most of our productivity and time management problems are caused by our over-willingness to say “yes”. We fill our calendars with meetings that bring us no value, but feel we must attend to stay in the know. We accept dinner invites when we know we should get an early night for an important presentation the next day. And the list goes on.

If you say yes to every ‘opportunity’ that comes your way, how can you ever focus on what is truly important to you? If you want to create something exceptional. If you want to perform at your very best, you must say no to everything that does not support whatever you want to focus on.

When you think about it, most of our stress and overwhelm come from what we say yes to when we really should have said no. We often say “yes” to something when we want the ‘problem’ to disappear. Only to find that we waste precious time trying to work out how to get out of it later.

When we accept an invitation to a meeting that we know will have no value or when a colleague asks us to help them out with a problem, we say yes because we do not want to be unpopular or appear rude.

Of course, there are our bosses asking (telling us?) to do something we do not want to do. In these situations, we often have no choice. But even then, perhaps you do have a choice, but your fear of upsetting your boss or being seen as a ‘rebel’ forces you to comply.

Many of the things we say yes to, we do not have to say yes to. In fact, we should say no.