CFC Blog #48: Hell Yes, or No

So just now I was torn between staying in my room to finish an assignment, or heading to the farmer's market for some vegan food and ice-cream. I think I'm gonna go with "nah" to the first thing and "hell yeah" to the second. Cool. Thanks Rob! 

- Amanda

Hell Yes, or No

Julie Sun wrote a powerful piece about being “busy” and how, in Chinese, the word itself was a 2-part word that read separately meant “heart dying”.  At the recent Road Makers gathering, we were talking about the idea of being busy in a few of our groups.  The always wonderful and thoughtful Reed Lowenstein offered that he avoided the word “busy” because it meant someone “did it to me” rather than “doing it to myself”. 

But of course we do make ourselves “busy”; sometimes annoyingly so.  And while we were in our group that one thing that helps me is the concept of “Hell Yes or No”.

The idea comes from Tim Ferriss’ book Tools of Titans, and specifically a podcast episode he did with Derek Sivers, the entrepreneur and founder of CDBaby. Derek realized that by saying “yes” to things in his life that he really didn’t want to do, it took away from what he truly enjoyed, and distracted him from his goals. So, he decided that as he made decisions if something wasn’t a “Hell Yeah!” from his perspective, then it should be a “no”.  

I’ve begun to include this in my decision-making about all the opportunities and “asks” that come across my desk.  Is it “hell yeah!”?  Then do it.  If not, the answer is no.