No, Then Yes

About a year ago I was invited to speak at a conference. I was also invited to DJ at the conference! Double whammy. I was actually pretty fired up about it. I have actually DJed a lot of financial conferences, and my genus and species of house music usually goes over well with the stiffs.

Anyway, a few months out from the conference, there was an email discussion about music, and there was an email discussion about my equipment setup, so I sent along my tech rider, thinking that everything was copacetic, and…ghooooosssssst. Nothing. Now, if you know me well, you know that I don’t chase people around. I don’t beg, and I don’t prostrate myself. If it was meant to be, then it was meant to be. So time passed, and I never heard anything, and the conference came and went, and after it was over, I got to read all the comments online about how great it was. Oh well. I have been traveling a lot for music lately, and there was stuff I needed to do at home, so the way I look at it, things happen for a reason, and it probably worked out for the best.

I can speculate as to the cause, but that would be a waste of time. But I’m not happy about how things turned out. In an alternate universe, the conference organizer might have sent me an email saying that they decided to go a different direction, and I would have been perfectly happy with that. But I would have been even happier if they never asked me in the first place! I never even would have known that it was a possibility!

So this leads into a theory of mine:

No, then yes

Not yes, then no

You should try saying no more often. “No” really works. You want to go out to dinner? No. You want to go see Kanye West in New Orleans? No. You want to go to a destination wedding in the Maldives? No. My reflexive response to all of these situations is no. But, let’s say a little time goes by, and I slowly change my mind. Hey, I decided I want to go to dinner. Hey, I want to go to New Orleans. Hey, I want to go to the destination wedding. The answer used to be no, but now it is yes.

Do you know how happy this makes people? Would you rather be sad first, and happy later, or happy first, and sad later? You know what people really don’t like? When you say yes, you will be somewhere, and then an hour before the event, you send a text and bail. That is pretty much the biggest asshole move in the world. And yet this is how the vast majority of people operate.

And the reason they operate this way is because the vast majority of people are people-pleasers. Someone asks you go to play golf, you’re standing there, nose-to-nose, and people just cannot bring themselves to say no and disappoint someone. So they say yes, and figure they’ll beg out of it later. Guys…don’t do this. No first, and yes later. If you say no now, they will be a tiny bit disappointed. If you text and bail with an hour to go, they are going to be pissed, and your name is mud. By the way, just being a no-show is actually better than texting and bailing, especially if it is a party or a large gathering where there are a lot of people. Chances are, they won’t even notice you’re not there. But there is nothing worse than getting 35 bailing texts an hour before your party is supposed to start. Trust me, I’ve been on the receiving end of that.

I did this recently. I was traveling to some city, and a subscriber of mine asked if we could meet, and I said no, I don’t think so, I am totally booked, and he seemed a bit disappointed, but they my schedule cleared up a bit, and I said, sure, I’d love to grab lunch with you! And it went great. The guy was thrilled. If I did it in the reverse order—knowing that my schedule was booked, I did the people-pleasing thing, and told him that we could meet, and then two days before, I reneged, he would be pissed, and then things would be awkward. Speaking of awkward, it is now super awkward between me and the guy who hosted the conference! He knows he ghosted me, and he can never talk to me again. If he saw me walking down the sidewalk, he would cross the street. What a crappy way to live! I live life in such a way that I never have to cross the street if I see anyone coming the other way. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I am not “awkward” with anyone. Now, I have enemies, but I have no problems walking up to my enemies and having an honest conversation. If you get in the habit of saying yes, then no, or you’re a serial bailer, there is a whole list of people you are going to avoid because you can’t look them in the eye.

“No” is a complete sentence! It’s the first word we learn when we are children. Do you want a bite of tapioca pudding? No. Do you want to go to bed? No. Somewhere, later in life, we lose our capacity to say no, and we go around saying yes to everyone, and our mouths are writing checks that our body can’t cash. I’ve actually known people who will intentionally double-book themselves because they figure they will just say no to one of them later. WTF? The order in which you do things matters. No, then yes. Applies to weddings, applies to funerals, applies to prom dates, applies to…just about everything. Now, look. Sometimes there are exogenous circumstances, and something actually does come up, and sometimes you’re just an idiot and you stretch yourself too thin, and there is no avoiding pissing someone off, but if you are honest, and you apologize, then it won’t be awkward. Speaking of awkward, if you flake on someone and you spend the next five years avoiding them, karma being what it is, eventually you are going to have some epic collision at some point, you are going to meet at a cocktail party or some social event, and you are going to be force-fed humble pie. You think you can get away with stuff—you can’t get away with anything.

I have said this before in the newsletter, and this is a quote of mine that I wish Bloomberg would put on their home screen: There is no commodity so rare and so valuable in the world as the man who does what he says he is going to do. You say you are going to do something, do it. This is all a long way of saying: underpromise, and overdeliver, not the other way around. You say you are going to be at the party? You’re there 15 minutes early, with a bottle of wine. You say you are going to show up to the book signing? You’re there and you buy five books. You say you are going to fly across the country to go to a wedding in the mountains and spend two days gasping for air because you have altitude sickness? Well, I just did this recently, and I’m glad I did it. You show up for people. Every. Single. Time. Because you would want people to show up for you. Zeus’ Law!

Also applies to work. I’m a writer, and I have deadlines all the time. I have a newsletter due on August 9^th? I’m going to have it done August 5^th. I have a book manuscript due October 1^st? I’m going to have it done September 1^st. I have two Coast Guard words for you: “flapcon,” and “flailex.” Flapcon is like setting FLAPCON 1—everyone procrastinates until the last minute and flaps their arms around and gets it done a week late, pissing everyone off in the process. A “flailex” is a flailing exercise, where we procrastinate until the last minute and flail around and hand it in a week late, pissing everyone off in the process. If this is your modus operandi, eventually you will have to expend a lot of energy to get back into people’s good graces. You say you are going to do something, do it—on time.

These are all habits of highly effective people, although I don’t think this was in the Covey book. This is what people do with a high conscientiousness score. I’m not perfect, though. I do double-book myself sometimes, I do sometimes bite off more than I can chew, but my batting average is very high—especially when it comes to deadlines. You can count on me. And if you ask me to go do something really lame, I will say no. And then I will think about it, and I might say yes, because doing something lame is better than sitting on my couch.

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