A simple criterion for making choices

Day 349 / 365

Essentialism is all about doing less but better. But doing fewer things would mean a lot of saying no. How does one decide what to say no to?

Popular TED speaker Derek Sivers has a simple solution for this. If you are absolutely thrilled about something, say yes to it. If it is anything less than that, it should be a cold no.

Why does this rule work? It’s simple. The mere act of reducing yourself to doing a few things will force you to choose only the best things to do. Suppose you are going on vacation for 3 days, and you need to decide all the places you want to cover. If you decide to say yes to all the ‘OK’ ideas, you would end up with quite a busy schedule and would probably have a hard time enjoying any of it.

But if you decide on criteria, say the reviews of a place online, and then set the cutoff so that you only visit places that are a 9 out of 10, you are sure to have a much better time.

It’s good to be highly selective, as it means that you are making your choices by putting some thought into them. You are not saying yes to everything by default. It’s not hard to come up with similar criteria for most other things in life. Once you have come up with it, make the choices that score more than 90% and reject all others.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Protect your asset