Every Yes Is a No to Something Else

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Every Yes Is a No to Something Else, or Everything You Say Yes to Costs You Something.

This is really a discussion about priorities because we each have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of mind power and focus that we can dedicate to things in our lives.

So everything that we say yes to takes up some of that time or mental bandwidth or focus or whatever, which means we probably have to say no to something else.

Here's the question that's going to help you learn throughout today's episode: What am I giving up when I say yes to this?

Every time you're presented with something—an opportunity, some chance to do something in your life, a business opportunity, or an opportunity to start a new business or side hustle—everything you're considering saying yes to, you need to consider: If I say yes to this, what will I have to say no to, or what will I replace?

For example, I used to just answer the phone. Now you can't talk to me on the phone without me knowing we're going to do it.

It's usually in the form of a scheduled phone call. When I schedule my phone calls, I schedule them with a beginning time and an ending time, and everyone knows about it ahead of time because I ended up wasting too much time on the phone.

Now I control my time because every time I answer the phone when it's not scheduled, it's taking time from something else that is a priority for me.

Now there are some phone calls that are priorities, so I schedule them so they're on my day list of what I'm going to do. I know when the important phone calls are going to be, and they're scheduled. They're a priority, and I treat them as priorities.

I'm protecting my time because if I end up talking on the phone for an hour when I don't have that time to give, then I'm saying no to whatever I did have scheduled for that hour.

That's just an example. Here's another example from my life.

I talk about my core values, which end up setting my priorities, and then I use my priorities to block my time and schedule my days and my weeks, etc.

When my first grandchild was born, that changed some of my priorities because there are particular times that I'm scheduling around my first grandchild. So when I made my grandchild a priority, I had to replace something else as a priority.

That was a yes.

Now I rank my priorities based on my core values. So my grandson is within my family or relationships core values.

So what it replaced was something below that in my core values. I get to set my core values. I get to set my priorities. But that's just an example.

Priorities change over time, and that's fine. You get to set your priorities.

My priorities changed when I had my first grandchild. My grandchild became more of a priority. It wasn't a priority before; now it is a priority.

So when you take your priorities, you assign your top priorities, then you schedule time for your top priorities first.

Everything you say yes to for a top priority pushes a lower priority down or causes you to say no to something that's lower on your list.

That's why it's important that you know what your core values are. You know what your priorities are because everything you say yes to, you have to say no to something else.

So remember the question: What am I giving up when I say yes to this?

Everything you say yes to in your life means you're saying no to something else or you're giving something else up. That's why I said this is really about priorities.

You decide what your priorities are, so it'll help you decide whether to say yes or no to a lot of things.

Now sometimes you'll have opportunities that might be good opportunities, but just because it's a good opportunity, or just because it might be profitable—a profitable addition to your business or whatever—does not mean you should say yes all the time.

Because maybe what you have to say no to is a better opportunity, or maybe what you have to say no to is more profitable.

That's why you have to always consider what you have to give up to say yes to any opportunity, or basically anything in your life.

Time, attention, money, and energy are limited resources. You only have so much money to dedicate to things, only so much attention or focus, and only so much energy every day to dedicate to your priorities.

You need to protect these things that deal with your priorities first before saying yes to something else.

Now sometimes you're going to have an opportunity that will replace one of your priorities. In fact, most of us don't have the same top priority all the time or every day.

You might have an opportunity that deserves to replace whatever your top priority has been, but you get to decide because when you have an opportunity and you're deciding whether to say yes or no to it, you get to decide if it's more valuable to you in your life right now than whatever priority it's going to replace or push down the list.

A yes does not only add something; it removes capacity from something else. That's what I mean: energy, focus, attention, time.

A yes does not only add an opportunity; it removes your capacity to do something else.

What have you given up for this?

Now, some periods of your life, any opportunity that's a potentially good or profitable opportunity is an instant yes because you're not full. Your bandwidth is not full, your attention is not full, your focus is not full.

But the more successful you are, the less free time, non-profitable time, or worthless time you have. Your calendar is hopefully filled with things that are either valuable to you or priorities or that you want to do, etc.

And as your calendar fills up with those types of things, it becomes more challenging every time you consider a new opportunity.

So if you have plenty of time and plenty of attention and focus to spare, then you should be looking to add more profitable things one way or another to your calendar.

You should be looking for new ideas, looking for more profit, looking for things that will help you reach your success.

It's like a race. You're racing to find all these things. Let's just talk about finances, making money, business.

You're racing to make as much money as you can, or you're racing to make so much money that you don't have financial stress all the time.

So as you're running that race, you keep adding good opportunities. Hey, I can add an extra thousand dollars a month on this or whatever.

Yes, I'll do it because I've got the time and the bandwidth to do it.

Then, once you get where you want to be or get close to where you want to be, the same opportunities that you might have said yes to five years ago now might not make sense because they're going to have to replace something else that's profitable.

Then you start comparing.

Is this new opportunity more profitable in any way than the opportunity I'm going to have to say no to or replace?

Here's the other thing. What if you have an opportunity to do something good, make a lot of money, say, but you know it has a large time commitment to it?

Right now, it might be your best option, but you know if you accept this opportunity, then you're going to be tied up and you're not going to be able to take opportunities in the future.

What's the decision?

Because if you take this opportunity now, it might dig you out of the hole now, but it might keep you from taking an even more profitable opportunity next week or next month.

Sometimes, you've got to just make your best guess. Make the best educated guess you can and go with it. It helps to have a lot of experience with this stuff.

Sometimes you can keep from getting trapped in an opportunity that looks good now that's going to keep you from an opportunity that's even better later.

The cost of a commitment is often hidden because the trade-off happens later, and every yes has a hard cost. That's what I was talking about.

Let's say you have an opportunity to make a lot of money, but you're going to have to dedicate 40 hours a week every week of your life to it.

That sounds like a job, right? It probably is, but it might be a business you start or whatever. But you've got to do this, and you've got to commit to 40 hours a week.

That is a hard cost.

No matter how much it pays or how profitable it is, the hard cost in this example is 40 hours of your life every week. Are you willing to pay that hard cost?

Compare new opportunities against current opportunities and possible future opportunities, not always against empty space.

It's okay while you're building to compare it against empty space, but when you reach a point where you have to compare it against your current priorities and future opportunities, use pre-decided priorities and core values, like I said, to make reoccurring trade-offs easier.

If you already know what your core values are, and you already know what your priorities are, it helps you quickly see if new opportunities fit in or not.

A good opportunity can still be wrong to say yes to if it costs you more than what it's replacing.

This is Wes, Your Life Systems.

Please like and subscribe. Keep working on those systems. I'll see you soon.

What's Next?

·        Choose one commitment or opportunity you are considering right now.

·        Ask what time, attention, money, or energy the yes will consume.

·        Identify the current priority or future option that may be displaced.

·        Compare the opportunity against what it will replace, not only against empty space.

·        Use your core values and pre-decided priorities to judge the trade-off.

·        Say yes only when the new commitment earns the cost.

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