Ed Gandia explains why saying no to most opportunities makes you more productive and less stressed. He uses Greg McKeown's Essentialism framework to show how high criteria for what you take on actually improves your life quality.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.
Hey there.
Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, this episode is much shorter than usual. Rather than my typical 45 minute format. Today I'm sharing a quick tip with you. This is part of the Audio Insights I publish for my private coaching clients every weekday and I thought you'd find it helpful.
So here we go.
Hope you enjoy it.
Very recently, I found myself stressed about all the things that I had going on in both my personal life and in my business. I just felt the sense of overwhelmed by all the competing priorities and never ending to do list. And I realized that I've been saying yes to way too many opportunities, projects and requests. So I started putting some rules and guardrails in place to break this pattern, including two rules that I learned from Greg McKeown's book Essentialism. The first is the 90% rule. So here's how McEwen describes this one. He says, and I quote, as you evaluate an option, think about the single most important criterion for that decision and then simply give the option a score between 0 and 100. If you rated any lower than 90%, then automatically change the rating to 0 and simply reject it. If it isn't a clear yes, then it's a clear no. End quote. This is a more helpful and sophisticated version of Derek Sivers. If it's not a heck yes, then it's a no idea, right? It's heck yes or no. I've always loved that. But McEwen does a much better job by putting some numbers to it, by giving it a little bit of structure in making it more practical than Derek Severus version of it. So I started applying this 90% rule to new requests, ideas and projects and it was immediately helpful. In fact, I'm still applying. I'm still in the very early stages of this, but it's already making a big difference. And that's why I was excited to talk about this today. I find it easier, by the way, with the 90% rule to think of it as a scale of 1 to 10. So if the idea is not at least a 9, then it might as well be a 1 because it's going to be a no. So I just Think better in terms of 1 through 10 instead of percentages. I find that it works great for everyday, simple situations. So, recently, for example, we had some friends come into town. They were unannounced. They didn't stop by our house. They just texted us out of the blue early afternoon on a Saturday to see if we wanted to meet them at a brewery that was about 45 minutes away from our house. Now, my first reaction was that I needed to say yes because I hadn't seen them in a while and they're good family friends. Plus, it'd be a little rude to say no to a friend visiting from out of town. But when I paused to think about the day ahead, the things that I was already working on, the plans we already had for that afternoon, that evening, the answer was clear. This request was maybe a 7 out of 10. And because it wasn't a 9, then, great. It was a clear no. And we were able to work something out, actually, for the next morning because they were in town for just one night, we're able to meet them for breakfast. But normally I would have said yes. It just is a reaction. McEwen's other tool is the extreme criteria exercise. And I'm finding this one to be more appropriate for more nuanced ideas and projects or requests that deserve a bit more thinking, something beyond the more binary 90% rule that I just described. And so here's how it works. First, you write down the opportunity on a sheet of paper. Second, below that, you write down a list of three minimum criteria the options would need to pass in order to be considered. Third, you write down a list of three ideal, or what he calls extreme criteria the options would need to pass in order to be considered. So by definition, if the opportunity doesn't pass the first set of minimum criteria, the answer is obviously, no, you don't need to go further. Okay? But if it also doesn't pass two of your three extreme criteria, the answer is still no. So I used this tool recently because I was seriously thinking about reviving a coaching program that I'd retired a few years ago. I know there was a strong market for it, but I had so many other things going on, I wasn't sure this is a smart initiative to pursue. I was just excited about the idea. So here are the minimum criteria I wrote down. First, it would be profitable. It would have to be profitable. It would have to be relatively easy and fast to deploy, and I would have to have a high confidence that it would sell well. The extreme criteria is it would need to generate a few immediate success stories, we would have to have rapid success with people who went through it. The current market would have to be ideal for it. And then my involvement in delivering the program would be 30% or less. So here's the interesting part. It passed all the minimum criteria, but only one of the three extreme criteria. So the answer was clear. I had to nix it. And it was hard for me to accept that. But when I looked at it objectively, I realized that was the right thing to do. Look, life is short. We can't do it all. We shouldn't do it all. That's not the goal. The goal is to live a truly rich and meaningful life. And if you can't live that kind of life because you're saying yes to too many things, you're going to end up very, very disappointed, unhappy and stressed and anxious. I don't need to tell you that you've probably experienced that many times, just like I have. You have to focus on the 20% of opportunities that are going to deliver 80% of the joy, fulfillment, profits and growth Time Management Laura Venderkam said it best in her TED Talk we don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want and then time saves itself. Well, that's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com where you will also find the detail show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.
