Utkarsh Amitabh presents the 'Hell yes or no' decision framework to prioritize tasks that genuinely energize you. He recommends saying 'yes' only to opportunities that provoke a strong enthusiastic response and otherwise saying 'no' to prevent low-value activities from scattering your energy and attention, with practical advice to choose one big daily goal and measure success against it.
Chapters
Hi everyone. I'm Utkarsh, here to tell you about an interesting productivity technique that I've been trying out these days, and it's called Hell yes or no. For every important decision, there are many competing factors that we've to come to decide. We have to analyze things. But these days that we're working at home, there are way too many things that need to be considered before arriving at a decision. It's impossible to factor in all of them all the time. That's where the hell yes versus no framework comes into being. It's picked up from a book that I read recently which says that unless and until you are truly motivated by a task that you're doing, try and avoid it. So for anything critical that needs to be decided, if you feel that you're energized by it, you're excited to do it, the answer is yes. Yes. If, however, you feel that, yeah, you could do it, it seems like an activity that you may see having some sort of return on investment. In the long term, you could do it. But these days, I strongly suggest that you subscribe to the Hell yes or no framework. Doing so will open up your day to do stuff that you truly care about, do stuff that really moves the needle. And at the end of the day, you can figure out whether it happened or did not. So try and think of how you spent yesterday, how many things that you had to decide from what to wear to a zoom call, to who to connect with, to what work to focus on, to which meetings to say yes to, which kind of people to avoid. If you got a speaking engagement or a new project, did you feel intrinsically motivated to do it? If yes. If you felt like hell yes, this sounds like an incredible opportunity. Go for it with all you have. However, if you feel on the fence, then maybe this is not the time to prioritize such a thing. When it comes to time management, we all suffer from what the Chinese used to call the death by a thousand cups. They used to describe it as a particular war strategy. But when it comes to our time, we let little engagements that are thrown at us basically crowd out our day. And then we finish feeling exhausted, busy, but without having truly moved the needle. So give this particular framework a try. For every decision that comes to you on a daily basis. If you feel that it's not something that you're energized by doing, if you feel that this is something that will not really move the needle, if you feel blah, then this is not the time to go for it. Be Careful of how you spend your time. Essentially, time management is about energy and attention management. And if you let your energy attention be scattered by with a death by a thousand cuts, you will pay the price for it long term because you'll feel that you've been working very hard, but no work ever seems to get done. And that's because we've confused the urgent with the important. Important stuff is not often urgent and urgent stuff isn't always important. We need to figure out and calibrate all the decisions that that need to be taken. For me, when I begin my day, I identify the one big goal that I want to truly focus on. And I measure my day based on whether I met my goal, exceeded my goal, or faltered on my goal. And to do that, I have to say no to lots of things and lots of opportunities that come my way. You know, when you reach a stage in your career, when you're attracting new kinds of networks and opportunities, you will learn to have to say no to seemingly good opportunities to free up your time and energy and attention for the great opportunities. However, when you're early on in your career, when you haven't created an ecosystem where lots of opportunities come to you, then you perhaps might have to say yes to just figure out experiment. And I'm highly supportive and encouraging of that. Even then, keep an eye out on how many things per day get you to say, Hell yes, I'm excited by it. I will do it. Let me know what you think of the hell yes and no framework and try and incorporate it in your daily life. It might transform your productivity and really augment your creativity. We send out a daily newsletter which talks about some of these techniques to build your category of one to augment your career. And we focus multiple times a week on energy and attention management by studying some of the smartest professionals around the world. We hope you found it interesting and we hope you consider subscribing to the complete network Capital TV experience. Take care and have a good day.
