The ‘yes’ door and the ‘no’ door

Feeling suffocated by your to-do list? When you’re running a business it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. So many demands, emails, questions, plans, proposals, money to chase, calls to follow up. So many decisions. There’s more to do than you have time for, and it’s easy to get into a situation where you feel like you’re running to stand still, or even to slip backwards.

We’ve come to realise through many years of getting it not quite right, that a lot of it comes down to making better decisions. Say ‘yes’ to something, and you open the door to whole stream of demands. Say ‘no’ and you have the time to do something else.

Some doors are easy to open — fantastic new client when you have the capacity to do a great job — yes please, come on in. Work that brings out the best in you — yes. Opportunities that lead to other doors you’re keen to open — yes, those too. You know the extra work will be worthwhile, and you’re happy to do it. Choose happiness.

Some doors are good to open, even though the extra baggage they bring with them are so big they’ll threaten to take over everything else for a long while. Writing a book fits into this category for us.

Some doors should stay firmly closed. Clients who don’t value you. Work which distracts you from your bigger goals. Jobs which you instinctively know aren’t right, but you’re scared about your finances, and maybe, just maybe, it’ll tide you over and get you over a hole. (It won’t, it will drag you into a deeper hole.)

We’ve recently closed the door on doing free talks, and on taking on a bigger office space, and that feels good.

This ‘yes/no’ binary might feel simplistic, but simple is good. Step back. The ‘yes’ door and the ‘no’ door are side by side but the spaces are very different inside.

Where do you want to be?