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Derek Sivers' rule: if it's not a hell-yes, it's a no. The idea cuts through the hidden cost of saying yes to things you're only sort of interested in, keeping you focused on what actually matters to you and your work.
Derek Sivers' rule: if it's not a hell-yes, it's a no. The idea cuts through the hidden cost of saying yes to things you're only sort of interested in, keeping you focused on what actually matters to you and your work.
Today I want to give you a very simple heuristic, a shortcut for making better decisions. In the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, we get all sorts of opportunities presented to us. Should you participate in this project? Should you go to this conference? Should you have this meeting? How do you decide what to say yes to and what to say no to? Well, I now use a technique I borrowed from a guy named Derek Sivers. He founded something called CD Baby. And what he does is the following. He says, if it's not a hell yes, It's a no. Now think about that for a moment. That creates a very strict and easy-to-follow standard. And what I like about this is that it accomplishes a number of different things. First, there are all kinds of opportunities in our life that we have that are kind of sort of interesting. They're kind of maybe like lead to something. Who knows? But there's opportunity cost to accepting all of those, to saying yes to all of those kinds of things. And that leads to the second advantage of this technique. It keeps you focused on what really matters. What matters to you as an individual, what matters to your family, what matters to your ability to get done work that really matters. So when I'm making one of those yes/no decisions, I use Derek's heuristic. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no.
