Chad Silverstein argues that success requires learning to say 'no' so you can say 'yes' to your highest-priority work. He highlights common distractions (especially email and smartphone notifications), recommends time-blocking (focus days and buffer days), and advocates delegating tasks to people whose 'unique ability' aligns with that work (referencing Dan Sullivan's 'who not how'). The talk mixes practical tips with personal anecdotes about the struggle to delegate.
Chapters
If you want to be successful at anything you do, you have to love, love saying no to everything, because it's the only way that you can say yes to the one thing. Every time you say yes to something, that takes time away from doing whatever it is that either is a priority or your unique ability or whatever needs to get done. And today, with as much distraction that we have, it is unbelievable how much time gets wasted on things that we say that only takes a few minutes. I can knock that out. Email is the best example because I think everyone can relate to it. If you have your email up during the day, if you, if you were actually using your iPhone's the best example. If you look at your iPhone at the end of the day and you track how much time you spent, you just cannot believe it's four or five hours, six hours on your phone. It's mind blowing, but it's because you're picking it up every 10 minutes, every time there's a beep notification or whatever the case is. And our life is full of that. So when you can shed that away and you can block time. And so time management is another workshop I want to do. So how to block out your time and control your structure, your order of your day. And when you do bucket, certain things that are either we like to say, and I was coached by Dan Sullivan, he's talking about focus days and buffer days. Things that are like, you can bucket out. If you're working in an office, it's paperwork, it may be emails, it may be having to make call. Um, but when you're scattered and you're constantly all over the place, what you end up realizing is that you ever actually never get anything done that's really good because you're constantly multitasking. I do this as well. So I know you and I, we work together. So I know, I know that, that, that struggle that we both have. And the good news about that is that usually people who are really busy and they're always doing things, they are getting stuff done. So you know how great we're getting it done. That's a questionable, you know, I mean, you gotta have truth tellers who can give you some feedback. But I think being able to say no is a very powerful tool that you gotta have in your toolbox. And you gotta have a strong core to be able to say no. I have a hard problem because I'm trying to always please people. I want to help people. So if they come to ask me, I say yes. People in my community ask. I want to say yes and saying no to things that you like, it's so hard. It's so hard. You know, I remember saying to one of my friends, I'd like to get on your calendar. And I reached out to him, and his. His assistant got back to me. And I remember thinking, you gotta be kidding me. Like, your assistant's gonna get. Like. And then one day I got an assistant, and I was so buried in so much work with so many things that I couldn't. I couldn't handle it. I needed. I needed help. And I remember the first time someone said, seriously, dude, you had your assistant get back to me? And I'm like. I remember thinking, I can't even. I can't even return calls. My day is so filled up with so much stuff. I. I literally can't. I can't. It's not a way to live. So having. Having. Having a clear focus on what you love, what you're good at, saying no to as much as you can, being able to share and be transparent with what your unique ability is so that you're in the flow majority of your time. The goal is to get it all the time. Just. It's very unrealistic for people to just jump to that spot. It's a process, and it's slow and it's hard, and you have to. Again, I said before, you have to obsess and be intense. And I really do believe that people who don't have that quality, they really struggle trying to, like, follow through with something like this because it does require discipline. It requires, you know, an insatiably, you know, curious and disciplined desire to, like, I'm going to get this. I'm going to get this. And I. And I personally attacked it that way because I was so excited about getting something that I can revolve my life around, that I can filter through opportunities and say yes or no and share with people, like, what my unique ability is and then be in that throughout the day. I love doing this. Like, I do. I get jacked up. I get excited when someone gets a light bulb in their head, and I can get people thinking. I love that. I love solving problems with people. So I know I'm excited because I can almost feel myself talking about it and smiling when I say it. And you know me well, Jacob. When I get stuck trying to develop something or trying to, like, create something or a user process or user journey, I'm trying to do automated messages. I literally. I've gotten to the point where I can so quickly identify what's not my unique ability. I. I'm on the verge of losing my mind a little bit with, like, being stuck doing things. And I've had to get really good at delegating. And Dan Sullivan teaches a very incredible tool called who not how, which is you have to just find a who who loves to do it. Who's their unique ability. I mean, Jacob, you are one of my. Who's on the highest level because you can create and develop things that I can't. And I'm an idea guy, so I like to be able to share things. And the fact that I was talking to you today and I said, you know, can you just do it now? And you got on and you started creating. I'm like, oh, my gosh, you have no clue. Like, you're my hero doing that. Like, you know, you. And you built a team around you that can build things. And I just think, to me, that is such a special quality, what a unique ability that is. And I know you love doing it, just not sometimes when I'm not in my unique ability. When you're a bad way. Right, Right. Exactly. We all are, though. And, you know, I'll tell you the worst part about that is can you imagine how much strife at home with people's kids and their wives and their. Their partners because they're drained, they're stuck at work doing things that they're. They're not good at, that they don't like, and they come home and they take it out, and it's not even. It's. It's. It's not their fault. I mean, they. You know, you could be so blinded by it, and you could be. Have been doing it for so long that it's just like normal to you. But I have to tell you, it's not normal. Like, we're not designed to like, to do things that we don't like. We're designed to actually do things that we are good at. I believe that every person has a set of unique abilities and skills that nobody else has. You just have to uncover it. You have to actually know what those are and be able to then zone in on those and then focus on those and then enhance those by either learning or developing or nuancing it, by. By integrating other things to it.
