Szymon's Zettelkasten

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P: Know when to say YES and when to say NO

Reference::


He says that you should use your 20s to saying yes to everything but once you reach 30 start saying no. That's a great supplement to this note because it shows that saying "yes" indefinitely can have a detrimental effect on your development because you'll spread yourself out too thin and you won't be able to capitalize on anything.

Here Sahil writes:

Thinking about the most important factors in each stage: Stage 1—Get Moving: Experimentation (figure out what works), force (intensity), time (consistency). Stage 2—Keep Moving: Angle (double down on what works), force (intensity), time (consistency).

Perfectly connects to the explore versus exploit concept where alternating between those two stages effectively delivers great results. He approaches it in the macro scale—the whole life.

However, you can also look at it in the micro, let’s say a year, dedicating a few months to explore different ideas and then use the last months of the year to double down on one or two.

This shows you that you don't have to say "no" to saying "yes" when you look at it at a different scale. In the life scale you must start prioritizing—and therefore saying "no"—to capitalize on opportunities (also to gain from the compound effect in the future; related). But when you look at it from a yearly scale, you can still designate a part of your time to opening yourself up to opportunities (like Black Swan opportunities), provided that you double down, focus, on a few projects later in the year.


Relevant notes (PN: )

FleetingNote Why is alternating between exploring and exploiting valuable? Is it somehow related to the adjacent possible? What else is it related to? Is it about local maxima? Is it about tunnel vision? Is it about our local past? Develop

Here's a little bit more about the topic: