The Power of No: Developing Minimalist Thinking

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We perceive every “no” as a missed opportunity. Or we are afraid to offend with refusal. And we get involved in boring, unimportant, mediocre projects. If this is about you, now is the time to start thinking like a minimalist - focus only on the most important things and learn to say no. Cody McLain, CEO of SupportNinja, explains how to achieve this.

Have you ever missed out on great opportunities because you made a commitment to doing something mediocre?

Maybe you agreed to watch a mediocre movie, and only then you were called to snowboard the same day. Or you were going to devote yourself exclusively to working with one client for the next four weeks, and so you were forced to refuse a better offer that you received a day later. Of course, you can break your promises in these situations, but if you do it too often, you will soon be left without friends and without clients.

What you don't do determines what you can do. Tim Ferriss (Tim Ferriss) American writer, speaker

So what do you do when you realize that you said yes when you shouldn't? More importantly, how do you determine what to say yes in a given situation?

For some of us, it can be very difficult to say no. We perceive every “no” as a missed opportunity. We worry that we could respond with rejection to an idea, relationship or experience that could affect our entire future life. And we are simply afraid to find ourselves in such a situation. And we agree to everything.

But the reality is that you cannot always say yes. So let's figure out how, when and why to say no.

"No" is a matter of prioritization

The key decision is not to prioritize your schedule, but to make a schedule out of your priorities. Stephen Covey Business Expert, Organizational Management Consultant, Writer

Most decisions in our life cannot be made using the word "yes" or "no", it is rather "or / or".

Each yes comes with a cost associated with it. In other words, in order to spend your time or money on one thing, you are missing out on the opportunity to spend it on something else.

The word no is a prioritization problem. With each “no,” you give yourself time to focus on something that matters most to you.

In an interview with Forbes with a venture capitalist, it was discussed that by saying no to less important matters, you can spend your time and money on things that are really important to you, your organization and your future.

According to the well-known Pareto principle, 20% of your efforts give 80% of the result. If you can find the strength to say no to empty pursuits, you can more effectively focus your efforts on the 20% that really matters.

A quick and easy way to make sure you are managing your resources wisely is to ask yourself, "Is this really the best way to spend my time or money?" In an article, James Clear goes into this trade-off in detail. Determining what your time is worth can be tricky. But those people who were able to prioritize focus on the things most important to themselves and achieve more in life.

“Yes”, “no” or “questionable”: decide which projects are worth pursuing

The difference between successful people and very successful people is that the latter almost always say no. Warren Buffett American entrepreneur, investor

It is not always easy to figure out how to respond to a given task. How do you decide which projects to say yes to, which ones to pause, and which ones to get rid of forever?

In our society, the word "no" is often associated with lack of initiative, indecision, stinginess. It is simply not accepted in our country to answer “no”. Now, this is erroneous thinking. By saying no, you don't automatically become a bad person.

Refusal does not mean that we are trying to isolate ourselves from everyone. This does not mean that we are worse at multitasking than others (in fact, no one works well in it). This means that we have prioritized our lives. We know what we want and we know how to successfully achieve it.

This idea is perfectly illustrated by the transition from full-time work to your own business. At first, you can go about your business in the evenings and on weekends, while leaving work for yourself. But over time, a contradiction arises. A business cannot be expanded if you are not willing to spend all your time on it. Therefore, we have to make a decision: either to leave the business as a hobby, or to lose stability and wages.

It would be great to keep your job and succeed in business. But in reality, if you do not give all your strength to one thing, then you remain mediocre in both cases.

Thus, the question remains open: how to decide which activity to choose and which one to refuse?

First, decide what you should definitely say "yes"

Before deciding how to respond to the requests of others, it is critical to understand your priorities. What tasks definitely deserve your yes? It could be something big, like the decision to quit your job to start your own business. But it can also be small, ongoing things that get your life on track.

Let me give you a personal example. Every Saturday I water my houseplants, change the water in the aquarium, go through my mail and receipts, check which business books came out in the past week, and so on. By breaking down such important components of my life as home, work and business into small permanent things, I get rid of many troubles: my flowers do not dry out, fish are healthy, and incoming mail and invoices do not accumulate.

These and some other habits help me to cope with current affairs in life and business in the most efficient way. So I have more time to say yes to other things. By periodically doing these important but small things, I save myself from problems in the future. By being proactive, I save time on resource-intensive tasks.

Once you understand what things are critical to your success, you will know what you should be spending most of your time on.

Create a "Do Not Do" list for tasks that definitely need to be said "no"

I am a strong believer in organizing my life with apps, folders and calendars. By effectively prioritizing your projects, you will prevent important tasks and tasks from being overlooked.

One of the most important folders in my to-do system is the Do Not Do list, which I learned about from David Allen's GTD system.

My “Don't Do” list contains things that I have identified as completely irrelevant. It helps me to get out of my head ideas and tasks that are not worth my time and focus on the areas that matter.

Just like trash accumulates on your balcony, your schedule can be filled with tasks that have no real value. It can be a habit to constantly check how many views a new post or video has collected on a YouTube channel. Or maybe you mow the lawn yourself, although it is financially more profitable to pay a neighbor's boy. The tasks on the Don't Do list are not necessarily bad, they just distract you from activities that could potentially yield significant results. Knowing which tasks need to say no helps to shorten your to-do list.

Whenever possible, give a special "yes"

The art of a leader is to say no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes. Tony Blair former British Prime Minister

If you say “no” over and over to things that are of value to you, it may be time to say “yes” to them in a special way.

For example, there are many bloggers on the Internet who organize their own courses. When you find that people are asking you the same questions over and over and you don’t have time to answer everyone, it might be worth creating a course that will cover all the information others are interested in. Although it will take a long time to complete the course, this is a great opportunity to share your knowledge with a large group of people with whom you would not be able to communicate in another format, and potentially make money.

Another option for the development of a situation when you do not have time to help someone is to transfer this matter to someone who has both the time and the skills and the desire to do it.

You don't always have to say no. Sometimes it's easier to ignore someone if you don't see the point in responding. However, consider this decision for a few minutes if your help is of great value to the other person. There is an excellent book by Adam Grant, "", which explains the importance of helping other people, even in small things. When you interact with people, you learn to connect with them and strengthen relationships.

These are just two of the many ways in which you can say yes while at the same time answering no to a direct request.

Say yes to hiring an assistant

To be successful today, you must prioritize and decide where you are. Lee Iacocca American manager, author of several autobiographical bestsellers

As a CEO of the company and a supporter of outsourcing, I am convinced that this article would not be complete without mentioning outsourcing.

A year ago, I discovered that I could say yes a lot more often because I learned how to effectively manage a staff of outsourcers.

Since owning an assistant is a rather expensive business, this option is not suitable for everyone. But if you want to work with a large number of clients, get rid of problems and become more productive, with a personal assistant it is much easier.

To experience the full benefits of having a helper, figure out how to delegate responsibilities wisely. Of course, an assistant cannot take on all your worries, say, running a business (if he could, he would have opened his own long ago). But you can delegate repetitive tasks to him, which often eat up most of your time.

Personally, I've seen amazing results from automation and outsourcing. By discovering that outsourcing can save thousands of hours, you can more often say yes to other things.

Say no to everything else

Say no to those things that you might want to do, but you understand that they are of no use. Say no to things that seemed attractive as an idea, but in the process you realized that they were not. Say no to anything that makes you procrastinate. Say no to purchases you cannot afford. Each of these no's will give you control over your future.

For any actions that are not necessary and meaningful to you, for which you cannot say “yes” or delegate them to someone else, say “no” without any regrets.

If these are some grandiose plans, add them to the list of future projects, but for now let them lie down. You must prioritize and spend your time on those projects that are important and relevant to you at the moment.

Once you have clearly defined what is important to you and your business, there is no reason to feel guilty about abandoning things, projects, or relationships that run counter to your ultimate goals.

And this is not a manifestation of selfishness. Ideally, you seek to influence the world in some way. So by focusing on your most important goals, you can help more people in the long run.

Start thinking like a minimalist - focus on what matters most

Innovation is the ability to say no hundreds of times. Steve Jobs entrepreneur, founder of Apple corporation

The ability to say no applies to things we want to do as much as it does to things we don’t want to do. By being able to recognize the main priorities in the most important areas of life, you thereby determine your condition and well-being in general.

This is minimalist thinking. The more we behave like minimalists about our attitudes, the more time we have for important aspects of life.

This is, as in pharmacology, a kind of minimum effective dose that provides the required result in an experiment, but in relation to the thinking process. The idea behind the minimum effective dose is that you put in just as much effort as it takes to achieve the desired result, and no more. For example, you know that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, and even if you heat the stove to 110 degrees, it will not give you any special advantages - only utility bills will increase.

Say no to all activities and ideas that are redundant and do not add any real value to your goals.

No one, except yourself, will be able to determine which of the actions are necessary in your life and which are not. To understand this, take a few hours and think about how and on what you spend your time and whether your behavior is consistent with your goals.

Knowing when to say no is essential to success in business and life.