If You Can’t Decide, the Answer is No

Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash

According to Harvard Business Review, we make about 35,000 decisions per day, and with every decision you are slowly depleting your decision reservoir.

Many of these decisions are offers or asking you for commitment: do you want to participate in a workshop, take part in a free course, hear a sales pitch for a certain product, …

Saying yes to all these offers is simply impossible.

A day only has 24 hours.

But saying no can be difficult - especially if you are a diplomatic person like me. I’ve struggled with saying no to such offers, but I’ve found a simple but powerful solution:

If you can’t decide, the answer is no. I have also heard the version “Hell yeah, or no”.

With this strategy, you can reduce your decision-load and not overcommit yourself to a ton of meetings you’d rather drop once the due date comes near.