When you are young, it is wise to say “yes” to many opportunities. You may benefit from making new contacts and accumulating new experiences, so it can pay to accept a lot of invitations.
But when you get older, it is wise to be more discriminating. Time is running out and you don’t want to squander your dwindling hours foolishly.
To help you avoid filling up your calendar with inappropriate commitments, I’ve prepared a simple decision tree you can use to decide which invitations to accept and reject.
1
Don’t accept invitations to events that you know will bore you or make you miserable. Duh.
2
This question helps protect you from saying “yes” to events that seem harmless because they are weeks or months away. By projecting yourself into the future and imagining a cancellation, you may recognize it is wise to say “no” now.
3
Never overlook the possibility that a seemingly delightful event is actually a sinister trap. It is your job to make the assassin’s job hard.
Good luck,
Don
Pittsburgh, September 5, 2018
Rebekah
October 10, 2018
I printed this and posted it on my wall at work. It has helped me say no to at least a dozen invitations to events that would have filled me with dread, causing me to waffle for days about whether to cancel or not. You have saved me much mental anguish by encouraging me to just say no from the start. And very possibly, had I gone to these dull events, I may have been assassinated.