Episode 24: When to Say Yes and When to Say No

This week, Crys and JP talk about yes brain and no brain. They discuss methods to use to help you decide when to say yes and when to say no to avoid burnout while still learning new things.

Show Notes

The Author Success Mastermind: www.theauthorsuccessmastermind.com

Transcript

JP: Hello, friends. This is episode 24 of the Write Away Podcast, and it is the 5th of January, 2021 as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost.

Crys: Crys Cain.

JP: And how are you doing? How’s your writing week been?

Crys: I don’t know why I don’t go ahead and look at my list before we record this because you ask me that every week and then I’m like, oh, I didn’t do anything. But I did tons of stuff. Last week was actually New Year’s. I actually got quite a lot done before New Year’s. But that was like what, a whole five days ago.

So I don’t remember anything . Not a ton of writing per se, but a lot of other creation work that was really good for me, really got my brain in a good space. I took all day Friday off which was New Year’s Day, and just hung out with my kid and that was fantastic because normally I’ve got it in the back of my head like, oh, that list of things you need to do.

And I was like, nope, today is off. So that was delightful. How about you?

JP: I had a wonderful week. I did a ton of writing. Worked on the TASM project, which went over pretty well with the class. And I also got notes back from the editor for book one, which was fantastic. Ultimately we just have some more things to add, but the overall structure  seems pretty solid.

So that was good feedback to hear. Yeah, and other little projects here and there, but I had a fantastic author business writing week.

Crys: Fabulous. Now, will you be adding the new words or will Abe be adding the new words?

JP: I think ultimately I’ll be adding the words, although he is going through it now to catch up to speed as to what revisions I went through, while I work on book two.

Crys: Excellent. Yep. Okay. We mentioned last week when we were talking about yes brain and no brain that that was a whole Podcast and I wanted to jump on that thought while I had it.

JP: It’s a good start to 2021 question, too.

Crys: I think so. Yeah. Before the thought flies away.

So JP, in the past, have you been a yes person or a no person?

JP: A resounding constant yes person.

Crys: Yeah. I’m a yes problem person as well. Why I say it’s a problem, because you say yes to everything because you want to be able to do everything because everything sounds like it could be fun, whether it’ll actually be fun or not is a completely different story. And then you’re overwhelmed with things that you don’t actually end up enjoying.

JP: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think  my yes brain stems from the whole working for another person kind of world, because when you work for someone, you almost always have to say yes, like you don’t really get a choice.

So like here’s a project and you can say no, but then eventually you’re out the door.  I think it stems from just like this constant thing that like I’ll have to fit it in, that kind of mindset. Yes. Yes, I’m a yes person.

Crys: Yeah. I say that I am chronically unemployable because of that, because I know that I can’t go back to saying yes all the time, among other reasons, but that’s one of the root ones.

But our friend and mentor J Thorn really encourages new authors to have a yes brain when they’re first starting. And so I want to talk about when yes brain is really useful. Just because most of us use it badly, doesn’t  mean that it can’t still be useful and used mindfully .

JP: when you’re starting out, you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t know what direction you’re going. Or at least I didn’t, I’m not going to speak for everyone. There’s a lot of room to say yes to things, but then there comes a time where you’ve started to build your brand, your structure, where that isn’t the case.

Crys: Yeah, the way I phrased it in my notes is that when the yes brain is useful is when you’re focused on learning new things. When I say focused, I want to specify that’s like in a particular realm that you’re not saying yes to everything in the world, that you’re saying yes to things in a particular realm, because you don’t yet know what you don’t know.

And the only way to learn is by doing. So when opportunities come your way in the beginning, it’s generally a good idea to say yes and make yourself catch up. Problem will of course possibly come in with overwhelm. And I want to say that this is really particular to people who are not actually already in overwhelm.

If you’ve got a chronic illness, if you have multiple children at a very young age, there’s a lot of reasons why if you’re hearing this and you’re going, but I can’t do that. That’s probably a really legitimate answer.  So then you need to learn to say no. I think that when I’ve learned to say no, I’ve gone through periods of saying no to everything because I haven’t yet learned the skills of prioritization or just even digging into what do I actually want to do.

JP: Yeah. And I think it’s hard because if you say yes or no  to everything, you have this kind of structure that you’ve built. And usually when you’re in that no mindset, you already have a structure. You already have your time allocated and whatnot and adding something in always means something goes out.

It may be watching less Netflix, but always something goes out. So you have to figure out what your schedule is. I think it just takes a lot of mental gymnastics to figure out what your schedule is and figuring out how to add things in.

And so I think saying no is just a really good way of protecting your current time.

Crys: But when is saying no, not good for us?

JP: I think there should be some type of a cycle that is personal to you of when you say no and when you say yes . I think when you’ve been on a constant train of kind of repetition, this is your structure, and you need that time to grow, that’s when you start opening back up to starting to say yes . We don’t ever want to be a constant.

We don’t ever want to be the same. We always want to have room to grow, because I think that’s the best thing that we can offer is being able to become a better version of ourselves. And once we are ready for that next step, that’s when we start opening up to say yes.

Crys: Yeah, and I think the thing that I often say no to is out of fear. This is a balance, because one of my fears is often “will I have enough energy to do this?” Which is a really valid fear for where my life has been , where I haven’t had reserves to draw from to complete things because I’d already said yes to plenty of things and drawn from my reserves and spent them.

 But when saying no out of fear of I will do it badly, I think we need to examine that particular fear specifically because we’re gonna do it badly. I think that’s one of the things that I have just had to learn to accept when I start new .

 I recorded some new videos for something on The Author Success Mastermind yesterday and today, and the first one, this video quality is terrible. The lighting was terrible. It’s just what I had at night. But if I waited for the perfect time, if I waited for the perfect lighting, if I waited, it just wouldn’t get done. And so maybe at some point I’ll have a little studio room with a ring light and I don’t know. That just all seems very committing.

But you’re gonna suck when you start. And I think if you accept that your first things are going to be terrible, you can do a lot more with your life in general.

JP: Definitely. And I think too, like when we’re looking at new projects, we always look to the people that are currently doing those things, unless it’s something brand new.

But more or less, there’s always something. Video, for example, there are YouTube stars or whatnot that we look to for, how do they do their lighting? How do they do XYZ? And we look at them at more or less their prime and we’re just beginning. And we have that stop gap that we have to be at their level when realistically like we’re starting. We’re at the bottom level and we have to grow to reach that level. And the only way to grow is to start.

Crys: So what’s our other option, JP, other than wobbling back and forth and debating everything endlessly.

JP: I think what we need to do is have some type of motto.

We need to figure out what, when we can take on things, and when the nice little shiny objects are just distractions. They may not be that solid piece of gold that you want, it may be silver or bronze. And you just think that it’s the exact thing that you want, but realistically it’s a subversion or it’s different than that.

Crys: Yeah. Our friend Alicia McCalla brought this up in our Slack and said that her 2021 focus is if it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no. And this originally came from an entrepreneur called Derek Sivers and Tim Ferriss and a whole bunch of other productivity gurus have latched onto it.

And it’s not the end all be all for me because there’s some things when you have to decide whether you’re doing them or not, that are  a lot more nuanced than this binary. But this is really good, especially for when you’re in overwhelm. When you’re over committed, when you’re too scattered, and you feel pressured to say yes to things, especially whether it’s from yourself or from others.

And just like sitting with it and being like, do I really want to do this? Do I have this energy and this desire in me that will let me take time and focus away from other things to do this thing? Because like JP said earlier, you have to give up something, especially when you’re in overwhelm, because you don’t have margins to fudge into.

And that helps you say no a lot more while not removing the possibility of the yes.

JP: And this kind of reflects back to the last episode. But last year I started a project that I thought was a hell yeah. And it was related to generating YouTube videos and blogs, but it was for kind of this product that I’ve been using.

But it wasn’t really my ownership of it. And the piece that I was more excited about was either doing that YouTube or blogging but having that audience to reach out to. And I thought that I could use this venue as that form of communication, but that wasn’t a hell yeah. That was just a, yeah this would take me to this end goal to this audience that has no relation to my author business at all. And yet here I was like trying to fit it into the right socket. So that’s when I realized that was a no.

Crys: One of the things I want to point out about that is that your original saying yes was not a failure or a mistake.

Your saying no once you realized you no longer wanted to do that was your success. And we can say yes to things that don’t end up being right for us and still get a lot of learning and value out of them, but the important part is when it becomes a no for you to find out how to say no and extract yourself,

JP: Yeah.

And I think we are, at least I, have this fear of letting others down and you think , I’m so far into this project, I need to hold out, I need to do this for so long. But no, because when you think about it, if you aren’t 110, not 110%, we won’t say that, but a hundred percent into the project, then you aren’t the person that is best for that project.

And you making this agreement if it’s with another person and you’re not giving it your all, that’s also somewhat letting them down. And so if you’re just holding onto it and you don’t want it, you need to let that go.

Crys: I think an active example for me that is one of the more nuanced versions, and that probably Tim Ferriss and crew would tell me that I need to say no to this because it’s not a hell yes, is writing romance. It is a hell no for me, for long-term. Or at least not in the way that I’m currently doing it, but it is literally what keeps my roof over my head. And I’m going to keep saying yes to it for a while. And I have a plan, and my plan changes as time goes on. But it’s a hell yes to having stability, or at least as much stability as we independent authors can get.

That’s one of those nuances where I have another tactic that I pulled up and it’s called the five whys, and this is a digging down into problems solution that Toyota created. And it’s simply asking why at least five times with your first question being, why do I want to do X, Y, Z. For them it’s often, why is this problem happening? So then you can use this in multiple realms. Like, why do I want to keep writing romance?

And then you answer because I need the money. Why do you need the money? Because I need to provide for my son and keep a roof over our head. And just dig down at least five times and then consolidate your answer or at least come out with several solutions to the answers you gave. I need a roof over my head.

Is there a way to make more money? Yes, I’m working in other realms and also utilizing my backlist, all that . So all of those are part of my long-term plan to get out of romance. And that’s one of the ways that I answer the things that aren’t a hell yes, but to need to be done in a more nuanced way.

JP: Yeah. And that five whys structure, I’ve used that a lot in business for various things. And this may help someone, it may not, but for us when we were doing this in various jobs that I’ve been in, a lot of the times, the why did this big error or this big issue occur? It would always first fall on an operator error. And that was always the worst answer because how do you resolve an operator error? Either you’ll fire them and you find a new operator that will make the error again, or you drill down and you figure out what that error really came from.

Was it written in a procedure incorrectly? Was it improper training? And so when you try to apply this to the writing life, don’t try to think of these high-concept wise, or maybe that’s your first one, but then try to drill down. Is it that you’re lacking some type of expertise? Do you need to reach out to someone else to do it? Do you need a VA?

 You need to figure out these and drill down into these bits as to what part of your process needs correction.

Crys: And if you need someone to sit there and ask you different why questions to your answers, that’s always helpful because sometimes we’re not the hardest on ourselves when we’re doing introspective work. We might be the hardest on ourselves when we’re like, you didn’t get that shit done. But when it comes to introspective work, a lot of people struggle with that. And so having a friend or a coach, or somebody walk you through and question your premise, ask you your whys, that can be really helpful.

JP: There’s also another method you can use in conjunction with the five whys called the  fishbone method. It’s basically like a bone structure of a fish. You have your core issue is the spine, and then you have these little bones coming off of it.

And each of those could be various reasons as to why this issue or why this concern or problem is occurring. Let’s say, why do I want to do romance or something along those lines. Well, I need to provide money, I also need to provide for my child, and this is what I know.

So those may be like three different things. And then you drill down into those three things and you try to find the actionable steps that you can take to resolve the problem, which may involve various portions, various topics that can help you. But that way you can identify where all of those problems lie.

Crys: Excellent. I think that wraps it.

JP: Yeah.

Crys: So our question to our dear listeners is: how do you decide yes or no on new opportunities?