The talk six months out is free. This is the trap, and I have fallen into it more times than I would like to admit. When the invitation arrives, the date sits comfortably beyond the horizon, the calendar for that week is agreeably empty, and saying yes costs nothing that I can currently feel. The person doing the agreeing and the person doing the work are, in a meaningful sense, two different people. One of them gets the pleasant glow of being wanted. The other one gets a Tuesday.

What makes this so difficult to correct is that each individual yes is defensible. The talk is genuinely interesting. The review is a favour for someone who has done favours for me. The advisory conversation is half an hour. None of them would survive a cost-benefit analysis as a reason to refuse, and so none of them are refused, and the aggregate is a quarter in which I am busy without having chosen any of it.

The correction that has worked for me is threefold. First, to use the words of Derek Sivers, it’s “hell yes” or no. If I am not genuinely excited about it, it’s a no. Second, I evaluate the decision based on whether I would say yes if the thing were happening next week. If the answer is no, the answer is no. Finally, if a commitment does not clearly serve something you have already decided matters, then the default should be a polite decline rather than a reflexive yes. So, as a reflection for today: what is on your calendar three months out that you agreed to because it felt free at the time?