On Saying No

CL

[It's Okay to Say No; No to Features; No to a Relationship; No to Politics; Default No]

Thesis: Your right to say no is stronger than their right to try to make you say yes.

[It's Okay to Say No]

'No' is the gatekeeper of your time.

Saying 'yes' to everything means that the gate is open, and your time flows out from you in whichever direction the person or thing that most recently asked for it wants to it.

This is particularly challenging when we live in a world so hyper optimized to continuously get yes's from you. Yes to watching that video, yes to paying attention to this thing, yes to looking at this new oh so super important thing-that-already-changed-the-world-yesterday-when-you-apparently-weren't-paying-attention. But hurry, pay attention now or you'll get left behind!!!

Every time you muster the strength to say no, you set a boundary and re affirm your claim on your time and focus and attention.

I say ‘muster the strength,’ because particularly if you are historically a people pleaser, saying no requires more energy than it does to say yes.

But, like a muscle, it's something you can get better at everyday.

So, this week, I'll be sharing 3 examples of ways I said no that required concentrated effort:

1. No to Features - As I'm rewriting my product, I'm saying no to a lot of features that people have asked for & I thought might be important

2. No to a Relationship - A brief romantic relationship ended after I said no to a change that was requested of me

3. No to Politics - I said no to helping someone with an issue she asserts is critical. This one was the most challenging and perhaps the most thought provoking.

This post is a reflection for myself on saying no, and is meant to serve as a reminder to you that you can say no, too.

It's critical to remember that your right to say no is stronger than their right to try to make you say yes. Put another way, your right to not care is stronger than their right to try to make you care.

I'd go as far as to say that the goal is to get so good at saying no that it's your default response to requests for your time.

This isn’t an argument against generosity; in the end, I think that saying no actually makes every yes so much more meaningful and valuable.

[No to Features]

As you may know, I've been rewriting the front end to my software product, BirdDog. As I'm engineering it, I'm rapidly making a lot of small decisions about the product.

A heuristic I'm using to help guide these decisions is asking, "Which solution is simpler?" And then, I tend to go with that!

This sounds lazy, and in someways it is. But that's a good thing!

The simpler the product is, the easier it will be to maintain and update.

I am the only developer, and we are trying to hit $1M ARR without hiring anyone else. Since we've accepted this constraint, we're accepting the implied constraint that the product must be simple and easy to maintain and extend when needed. (Contrary to what ai boosters and vibe coders would have you believe, less code is preferable to more code)

So, while you can call going with the simple solve 'lazy', I would argue that it actually takes a lot of discipline, and is, in an important way, harder than saying yes to everything, at least in the short term. It involves saying no to SO many 'good ideas' (read: ideas that myself or Jack or a customer thinks are good!).

One big thing I said no to this week was a billing model that would let agencies pool & allocate credits from one subscription across multiple clients. This is something that's been requested quite a bit and agencies think would make it easier for them to use.

But, it would add a ton of complexity to the product and billing, and there are easy ways to solve the issues that don't involve code. And, we're already doing these solves for our current agencies customers and it’s working!

Some other things that we eventually said no to in the past even after saying yes to them at one point or another:

• Letting AI generate message drafts in platform

• Finding key people and contact information at an organization

• Letting one user or customer have different lists with different signals in our UI (still available in api)

Every time we say no to a thing, the platform becomes easier to use and maintain and the value prop gets clearer and clearer.

What's not included is almost more telling than what is!

[No to a Relationship]

I was going out with a very lovely lady; our first date was in early March, and we were exclusive for the bulk of April.

This week, she asked me if I could make a behavior change for her, and it was not the first time.

The thing about the behavior change that I think we both recognized is that it wasn't a change that would make me a better or person or solve some objectively bad behavior; it was, rather, a change that would, ostensibly, make me more compatible with her.

Me making that change would've been bad in the long run; it would just mask an underlying clash that simply meant we were not entirely compatible. I’m proud of myself for saying no. Even though it was challenging, saying yes would have resulted in me compromising on something I shouldn't and created more pain and discomfort for both of us down the road.

She's a lovely person and I'm sure will find someone who is right for her, and wish her all the best.

[No to Politics]

The third time big time I said no this week was by far the one that caused the most discomfort, and is, admittedly, still bothering me a bit. I have that 'ick' feeling you get when you realize that someone violated your boundaries, and you have some regret around not shutting it down sooner.

But, you also don't want to blame yourself too much, because you told the person no more than once but they continued on about it. And, when you point out that they crossed a line, they say, 'oh, I'm sorry you feel that way' and continue crossing it anyway.

I'd be lying if I said I thought there was a constructive way to deal with this kind of person other than by limiting or removing interaction with them and entirely shutting them out emotionally.

This is a strong form of saying no that can feel unnatural and requires a lot of effort and absolute rejection; which is all the more reason that I think the 'default no' stance is something to strive for.

From a high level, this person had constructed a narrative that squarely put her as a victim that was entitled to a thing, we'll call it her 'Holy Land'.

She has, for the last two months, continuously asserted her claim to this Holy Land to myself and a couple of others. A number of times, we collectively put the issue to bed, with an excess amount of care and sensitivity given toward her emotional state. To put the issue into perspective, this was even after we had to stop her from doing something outright illegal to get her Holy Land.

Still, it has continued coming up, in a destructive way that has obstructed our ability to complete other important work.

Last week, I made the mistake of conceding on a compromise that I thought, in the moment, would not cause harm to anyone else, but give her some portion of her Holy Land, and get her to move on. However, after I agreed, it became clear that this compromise would actually cause harm to others.

So, two nights ago, I told her that I could not go through with what I said I would. I invited her to my room with one other individual, and made it clear that I only had 10 minutes before I had to discontinue the conversation.

I said my piece in 2 minutes, articulating that I felt coerced and disrespected. She gave me the classic, 'I didn’t intend to make you feel that way' before going back into the same argument myself and the other individual had heard perhaps a dozen times.

I quickly gave her my rebuttals, and at minute 10, asked her to leave. She did not.

At minute 14, I told her she was violating a boundary of mine by staying in my room uninvited. Her rebuttal was that I was violating a boundary of hers by not helping with this issue.

The other individual intervened at that point and got her to leave; whatever I was to say next would not have been good.

It's such a weird situation to think about, because she had so obviously disrespected myself and the group’s right to say no a number of times, had to be stopped from committing a crime, and would not get out of my personal space, all because she did not get what she believes is entitled to her. She was, in effect, asserting that she had some right to make me & the others agree with her that superseded our right to say no!

The point of this article is that that is not at all true: your right to say no is stronger than someone else's right to try and make you say yes.

And, in my opinion and experience, no viable decisions other than to quite strictly limit or altogether remove interactions with this sort of person. Every time that I have done so in similar situations, my life has gotten so much better.

When you don't, and the person won’t move on their position, they have a very powerful asymmetry against you, and they know it! Since they are more emotionally invested in the issue than you, they’ll keep on at it. No matter how many times you say no, they need you to just say yes, even partially, just one time. Now, your position has gotten worse: in my case, I had to go back on something, which I absolutely hate doing and try to avoid at all cost.

This is all the more reason to have a default no, and suffer no fools; any yes needs to be thoughtful and freely given, or people like this will take whatever they want from you.

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[Default No]

I'll say it one more time: your right to say no is stronger than someone else's right to try and make you say yes.

I really do believe that getting to the point where your default response is No is perhaps the best way to go.

It sounds crass, but think if you responded to every cold email you ever received: you'd have no time for anything meaningful whatsoever!

This gets more challenging when you are saying no to people you know; but someone knowing you doesn't give them a right to your yes. That is something that needs to be freely given by you.

This doesn't mean you need to be isolated or greedy; in all honesty, this world view enables you to be even more generous when you want to be and when you think it is worth it. If I was responding affirmatively to every single request for my time, I wouldn't have time to do the 2 hours of very meaningful volunteer work I do once a week.

And of course we can connect this back to the issue of emotion overtaking reason and logic in the west, and it's latest symptom, the AI bubble. You don't have to believe some trend or some philosophy just because everyone is spending so much time and effort in attempts to convince you that it's the most important thing ever.

You get to decide what you spend you time on and focus on.

You don't need to care about Claude Mythos or some vague fear mongered notion of ai. Guess what, you don't even have to care about AI at all! 

You can just go outside and do your thing!

You are not bound to what they want you to be.

Everyone will tell you what the most important thing is; if you listen to all of them, you will go nowhere but toward madness.

You get to decide what you say yes to, not them.

Live Deeply,