How to say yes

In an earlier post, I wrote:

Up until about my late 30s, I took pride in saying “yes” to opportunities, absolutely filling my time relentlessly with variety and quantity of work. I used to call myself a “specialist generalist” as indeed I worked in so many countries, types and sizes of businesses that I do feel I could effectively contribute to a massive variety of roles and businesses almost anywhere. However, as time went by, I began to recognise (and friends and mentors began to strongly suggest to me) that I started to say “no” to more and more opportunities in order to focus on my own Ikigai:

What I am best and most uniquely suited to do

What I love to do

What the world needs

From the post: Focus means saying no

This, then, brings real attention to how to say yes:

Two simple rules that make saying yes harder and saying no easier:

1. Don’t say yes on the spot.

2. When you do say yes to something, schedule when you’re going to do it in your calendar right away. Book twice as much time as you think it will take to do it right.

Both rules are helpful but the second rule is perhaps more important. Scheduling the work helps you realize that saying yes has a very real cost. By schedule…