Confessions of a Yesaholic
Hi, I’m Jacob Baadsgaard…and I’ve been a yesaholic for 3 years. These are my confessions.
Do you struggle with saying “no?”
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Yesaholism is a fairly common condition that affects millions-to-billions of people across the globe.
Here’s how “yesaholism” is defined:
Does this sound like you?
Now, conquering yesaholism doesn’t mean that you should never say “yes,” but, per the definition, if you are saying “yes” so frequently that it’s negatively affecting your life, you’ve got a problem.
My story
I’ve personally struggled with this problem since I started my own business. To get a start up off the ground, you have to be willing to jump at every opportunity.
Back when Disruptive Advertising was young, I felt like I literally couldn’t afford to say “no.”
On top of that, I said “yes” consistently and often enough for it to become a habit. Even after Disruptive was well beyond its scrappy startup days and was making enough money for my blood pressure to come down, I still kept agreeing to things without a second thought.
What’s worse, I was afraid of what would go wrong if I said “no.”
But the problem was, I was saying “yes” so much that I was constantly chasing from one thing to the next. I was dropping the ball all of the time and it was starting to affect my work and my family life.
I was a yesaholic.
The psychology of yesaholism
To break the cycle of yesaholism, you have to understand where it comes from.
When you get right down to it, there’s a simple reason why yesaholics have a hard time saying “no.”
Saying “no” is risky.
When a client hears “no,” you could lose business. When a coworker hears “no,” you could lose face. When your spouse hears “no”…well, you get the picture.
We don’t like losing or embarrassment, so we often say “yes” when “no” might actually be our better option.
Oh, and being a yesaholic makes other people happy…at least, at first.
Unfortunately, once you’ve said “yes” a few too many times, it gets hard to do everything you’ve said you’ll do. You start to lose your grip on life and you become enslaved to your commitments.
And that’s when yesaholism takes over your life.
Diagnosing and Treating Yesaholism
So…are you a yesaholic? Do you know one?
To self-diagnose, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you often work late in order to keep on top of things?
- Can you remember the last time that you had a clean inbox?
- Is there breathing room in your calendar?
- Do your friends and/or family complain that they don’t get enough time with you?
- Are you sacrificing exercise on a regular basis to meet your commitments?
- When people ask, “How’s life?” do you have an endless list of things that are keeping you busy that you tell them about as if you were proud of it?
Do any of these questions strike a chord with you? If so, you — or someone you know — might have a problem.
But have no fear! After struggling for years with yesaholism, I’ve finally discovered 5 principles that have helped me make great strides against this affliction.
I’m not cured yet, but the following tips have helped me along the path to recovery.
1. A “yes” to one thing is a “no” to something else.
Have you ever heard of opportunity cost?
It’s a fairly simple concept. If your time is being dedicated to one thing, then it can’t be dedicated to another.
Here are some common opportunity costs yesaholics struggle with:
Sacrificing sleep
One of the first signs of yesaholism is missing out on sleep. You might think things like “sleep is for the weak” or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
Unfortunately, lack of sleep actually decreases your ability to fulfill your commitments. Sleep is very important when it comes to maintaining productivity and good health.
Lack of sleep can lead to you actually getting less done and not doing it very well.
Oh and…regularly getting less than 7 hours of rest a night can make you more likely to develop a wide range of health conditions.
In fact, not getting enough sleep makes you die. At least, at a younger age than you might have if you were getting enough sleep!
So, guess what? Yesaholism is literally killing you.
Letting loved ones down
This is another sacrifice that’s easy to rationalize.
The short-term client relationship seems to be a bigger risk than the long-term family relationship, so when push comes to shove, what do the yesaholics focus on?
You got it, short-term relationships.
The problem is, do this enough times and your family relationships start to break down.
To put it simply, spend all your time saying “yes” to strangers and your loved ones will end up saying “no” to you.
Multitasking, lots of multitasking
If you think multitasking is a way to get out of dealing with your yesaholism, think again.
Multitasking simply isn’t an effective way to meet your obligations.
To make matters worse, chronic multitaskers struggle with a lot of the same problems that afflict sleep deprived people. Multitasking actually makes it harder to empathize and even think.
That sucks.
There really is no way to get around opportunity cost.
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” — Warren Buffett
The fact of the matter is, if you say “yes” to one thing, you’re saying “no” to something else.
2. It’s not your job to make everyone happy
Do you ever feel like you need to keep everyone else happy, all the time?
That might be part of why it’s hard to say “no”. That word seems to make people unhappy, so we do our best to keep away from it.
However, the irony of the situation is, when you feel responsible for the happiness of others, you’re very likely to end up unhappy.
Now, I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t ever try to help others. I actually think that’s one of the best ways to spend your time. But remember, you are in charge of your own happiness.
Here are some things you can consider:
Are you focused on making the right people happy?
Gauge the importance of each decision you make and think of who is most important to you.
If you’re cancelling a romantic evening with your spouse so that you can stay late to work on a project you told your boss you’d have done by tomorrow, you might have some problems at home that will make it harder to focus at work.
Add that distraction to how exhausting it is to work extra hours and you may end up needing to redo the project.
All of sudden, you’ve done a crummy job on all of your commitments and your other projects are now behind, too.
Honestly, everyone might have been better off if you had just said “no” in the first place.
When you’ve prioritized your relationships and commitments appropriately, everything works better.
Are you making others happy for the right reasons?
Saying “yes” when you can’t keep your word can turn short-term happiness into long-term misery.
On the other hand, if you say “no” to requests that will overload you and focus instead on doing a killer job with the things you actually can commit to, you’ll see a lot more success.
“No” means you understand your limitations and shows that you are truly committed to bringing value to your work, especially when that “no” means you miss out on something you want.
3. Quality vs quantity
With the exception of Wal-Mart products, people typically prefer quality over quantity.
That means you should probably change your measure of success from “look what I did” to “look what I did well.”
Now, this doesn’t mean you should just give up on quantity, but to get quantity and quality will take a lot of focus and work.
This is especially true for relationships. Relationships improve or decline depending on how much time you put into them, but the time that matters most is quality time.
To illustrate this, let me give you an example from my own life.
Even though I try to be a part of the lives of my kids each day, I make it a point to schedule a daddy-daughter date with each one of my daughters each month so that we have a real, quality opportunity to connect.
To make these dates happen, I have to take some time out of my busy schedule, but these date night ensure that I am getting both quality and quantity time with my girls.
So, how do you balance quantity and quality?
Honestly, you have to do more than simply prioritize your most important activities and projects so that you can get more done. You need to put some buffer time into your schedule.
Things don’t always go according to plan — if your schedule is always packed, your relationships will suffer when the inevitable, but unexpected problems come up.
On the other hand, if you’ve left yourself some room to breathe, you can adjust to life’s hiccups without failing to meet your commitments.
4. Get your priorities straight!
You would never want something that’s unimportant to get in the way of something that’s really important, right?
Sure, but unfortunately for yesaholics, overcommitting yourself often means that the least important things get the most attention.
The best way to avoid this is to put your priorities in order and stick to it.
In general, taking care of yourself and your family should always be your top priority. It will help you stay productive, helpful, and keep clear of the problems that can be brought on by relationship stress.
From there, a good way to decide what’s most important is to ask yourself what you would do if you had no obligations.
Would you immediately take a hike? Read a book? Exercise? Maybe spend more time with your family?
If you can identify the things that make you feel relaxed and fulfilled and then make time for those things on at least a weekly basis, you’ll have an easier time staying emotionally centered.
Having your priorities in line will make it much easier to know when to say “no” and it will help you accomplish all of your goals more effectively.
5. Say “no” nicely
Just like Simon Cowell.
Just kidding, Simon’s not really a shining example of this.
Still, we often fear saying “no” because we don’t want to hurt someone, let them down or offend them. I personally just don’t like feeling like I made life difficult for anyone.
It’s not bad to want to avoid hurting people, but saying “yes” when you should have said “no” can actually be more hurtful than simply saying “no” tactfully.
With that in mind, here are 3 little ways to keep a “no” from being too harsh:
1. Establish expectations
Be clear with your schedule and make sure people know in advance where you can be and when.
Think of it this way, if all of your co-workers know that you love watching your son’s baseball games every Friday afternoon, they probably won’t ask you to cover their shift at that time.
Even if they do, they’ll probably still respond a lot better when you say “no.”
2. Explain the situation
People don’t always know what they’re asking you to give up when they ask you to take on something new.
When you explain your situation, people will almost always be able to see why your answer is, and should be, “no”.
You can phrase it like this, “Sure, I’d love to finish that up for you today, but that will make it so project X will have to be pushed to tomorrow. Is that what you want?”
If the new task is really more important than what you were going to do, they should be okay with you changing your priorities. However, if the task isn’t really that important, they should be happy to let you get your higher priority task done first.
3. Be honest
People are typically understanding when they know that you have a lot on your plate — most of them are probably yesaholics , too—and they’ll appreciate getting a “no” instead of shoddy work.
Being upfront about what you can and can’t do gives people the opportunity to find someone else to do it, rather relying on you when you might not be at your most reliable.
Honestly, when all is said and done, no matter how tactful you are, you’ll probably end up offending someone.
But that’s okay. Remember, your top priority isn’t to make everyone else happy.
Summary
After dealing with yesaholism for years, I can definitely say that being addicted to saying “yes” can have some crazy side-effects.
The good news is, recovery is possible.
Fortunately, if you can learn to recognize the cost of saying “yes,” prioritize and say “no” when it needs to be said, you’ll be well on your way to taking back control of your life.
You’ve heard my two cents, now I want to hear yours:
Do you have any Yesaholics confessions? What stood out to you most?
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