41 ms·

“Really successful people say no to almost everything”

350 points by Oras 6y ago

tn890 6y ago
Honestly I think this is entirely counter-productive for anyone that's not mega-rich. If you're Warren Buffet, of course you'll have a thousand offers and propositions a day and you have to say no to most of them and find that one gem. If you're regular Joe (and, yes, that most likely includes YOU reading this) you can't afford to shut down most opportunities or you'll never get anywhere.
- christophilus 6y ago
  I don’t think that’s true. Almost every project I’ve been on had most of its major problems due to folks’ inability to say no. Most of the people in my life who are overworked and hurried are that way because they can’t say no. The happiest people I know have great boundaries and say no all the time. Anecdotal, but my experience has been that “no” is one of the most useful words in my vocabulary.
  - bumby 6y ago
    I think the sentiment really comes down to prioritizing before trying to execute within the resource constraints. This can apply to any level and I see low-tier employees shooting themselves in the foot from a productivity standpoint because they have an inability to prioritize their efforts effectively
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  I disagree. We all have many opportunities to say no. You know how much time I spent working on projects that didn't go anywhere and were a complete waste of time and money? (not mine, my employer's). I didn't say no. My manager didn't say no. Their manager didn't say no. You may say that's part of being successful, many things fail but a few stick and make it big. That's true but often the writing is on the wall but people ignore it. One thing I do agree is that not everyone can say no. For example, if you're a software engineer in a big company, you might not have much say. That's why it's important to get yourself into a position where you have more control on the things you work on. Not easy but you don't need to be Buffet to achieve that.
- nimblegorilla 6y ago
  > If you're regular Joe (and, yes, that most likely includes YOU reading this) you can't afford to shut down most opportunities or you'll never get anywhere. Anyone with software development skills gets tons of low quality app ideas from friends and family. And tons of other opportunities from recruiters paying below market. It's hard walking away from a sort-of-ok opportunity when you don't have anything going on, but I've learned there are always more things coming up.
- jfengel 6y ago
  In general I think it's a bad idea to take advice from successful people. There's a thing that goes around, a piece by Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes[1], talking about how great it was to quit his safe job and become a cartoonist. Except... how many famous cartoonists are there? How many other people quit their advertising job and just failed? If each of their stories were circulated as much, would we see this swamped by a thousand heartbreaking memes instead? Doing what Warren Buffett does works very well for Warren Buffett. The odds are good that it won't work for you. "Choose the right things" is pretty vacuous advice. [1] https://highexistence.com/images/view/illustrated-advice-from-bill-watterson-creator-of-calvin-and-hobbes/ https://highexistence.com/images/view/illustrated-advice-fro...
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    Bo Burnham says the same thing. He’s talented and taking advice from him is akin to following the advice of buying lottery tickets.
    - justinmeiners 6y ago
      Do you think being good at something and successfully selling or marketing your work is like buying a lottery ticket?
      - jfengel 6y ago
        Sometimes, yeah. Comedy is one such example: it gives huge rewards to a few celebrities, while a lot of other equally talented people just never manage to be in the right place at the right time. It's perhaps especially true for comedy. You can see it when you watch a comic on TV: they're much less funny than in person, because you're not surrounded by a lot of other laughing people. The same routine by the same person can get little more than snickers when done at somebody's open mic night -- unless somebody recognizes that they're famous. Celebrity reinforces itself. Burnham is very talented and I'm sure he worked like crazy to market his work. But he will also tell you the names of a hundred others who are equally talented and worked equally hard, but you've never heard of them. The market for celebrity is very fickle, heaping huge rewards on a few, but drop off rapidly for people who aren't in the hump of the long tail. Warren Buffett isn't profiting from celebrity in the same sense, but there's a similar effect where the biggest winners are lucky as well as smart. Their advice often doesn't take that into account, and it's important to measure that in your appetite for risk.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  A picture of Warren Buffet is a "dog whistle" you see on Yahoo Finance and other web sites aimed at people of a "certain age". It's like the hypnotic induction (to make you connect to your identity as a consumer) that starts with talking about "our smartphones". For a long time I would wind up seeing Becky Quick interview Buffet a few times a year on CNBC, it got cringeworthy when his dementia got worse and he started to leer at her. (Becky Quick is a "babe") Once upon a time he was a genius investor, but he's not what he used to be and they don't have a successor in the works. For me, I deleted my LinkedIn account recently because it had brought a remarkable number of time-wasters into my life.
  - eatbitseveryday 6y ago
    > when his dementia got worse Source? > don't have a successor in the works. Source?
- ssully 6y ago
  Just picturing how long I would last at my job if I just said no to every task I was assigned.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Between billboards, internet ads, radio commercials, spam, and telemarketing calls, I don't get a thousand offers a day, but I might get a hundred. Of course, it's easier to say no to most of those, since they're not actually things I want. They're just garbage offers. But even of the ones I want... There are many places offering to sell me lunch today, and there are several places where I'd be interested in eating lunch. I can only eat one lunch today, though. So I think we have the same thing, just with much smaller offers.
xupybd 6y ago
As a people pleaser I find this very challenging. But also very true I've seen the damage this has done to my own career.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  The question is: do you really want a life similar to Warren Buffet or Steve Jobs? If you are a people pleaser, probably not. I'm more in the successful category, but it meant that I gave up having a social life. Most of us have to choose.
  - xupybd 6y ago
    I find I give up my social life to work long hours as a people pleaser. Also I end up doing the low visibility low reward tasks that no one else wants. Just to be a team player. Then appear as a low performer compared to the guy that refuses to do anything that doesn't praise.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      Have you talked about it with your manager? If he/she doesn't help you, the best thing is to switch teams (start talking with other people who you helped outside your own team). If that's not possible, start interviewing with other companies without mentioning it to your current colleagues. I have a friend who was doing the same thing as you, went to another team inside the same company, and actually the same kind of thinking that you have (helping other people) helped him get multiple promotions, and he's a team leader with a nice salary, and his team loves him. Also one more thing: he was using an old language, that's why he was afraid of switching teams. I suggested him to learn any modern language used inside his company to have leverage to be able to switch company if he wants...he just needed to get a bit outside his comfort zone, after that everything came for him (he's still with the same company, but he's happy now).
    - loopz 6y ago
      You just found out why only 1% can be 10-20X anything.
pferde 6y ago
The important thing to keep in mind here is that Buffett is talking about "saying no to almost everything" when you are already successful. Not when you're actually still in the process of becoming successful. The rules are different there, although of course Jobs' quote about focus, I think, applies to both situations, to some extent. EDIT: Grammar.
- _trampeltier 6y ago
  He does not just "no", he know his time is finite. As long you have (free) time, then yes, you might say yes to something more. But as more you climb the ladder up, the more people come to you with all kind of things. And then even if you would like, there is not enought time and energy in a person to do everything for everybody. I guess, thats a reason why people burn out. Even when people work so hard, if you say yes to everything, there is no chance ever to finish your many many tasks. Learning to say "no" is very important.
d--b 6y ago
Well, I'm choosing to say no to try being that successful. Cause I don't want to say no to a million things and find out that I'm not cut for being Steve Jobs in the first place.
boltefnovor 6y ago
Advice from rich people is useful for other rich people.
Mvandenbergh 6y ago
Hold on. Here's what he said: "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything." That's very different. This is a message that is useful to hear for extremely driven ambitious people who are already successful - that it's better to spend all the time you spend working on a few carefully chosen things. It should not be interpreted as advice for people who are not extremely driven to not do things. The baseline assumption is that you already spend a substantial amount of time working on potentially productive things.
- apatters 6y ago
  That's part of it but I think it's more complicated than that. For instance I have heard b2b sales described as a diagnostic process. If you know exactly what you can deliver and it matches exactly what the customer needs you encourage them to say yes. It will likely go very well and then the relationship will grow over time. Otherwise you thank them for the opportunity and move on. The same arguably applies to all business deals and doesn't have much to do with your current level of success. If you pursue the right opportunities you will do well. I know people who have struggled for years because they consistently went after the wrong opportunities. The difficult part of course is being able to tell the difference!
  - pbronez 6y ago
    Interesting point about B2B as a diagnostic process. I reached a similar conclusion organically but didn’t have that language for it. Essentially, I’ve found that saying “based on your description of your challenge, the product I have today isn’t a good fit” buys you a ton of credibility for when you DO have a good solution available.
- netcan 6y ago
  ...and the article seems to directly contradict this point: "Whether he meant saying no in the investment sense is not so important; what is important is that his advice, in whatever context, can apply to anyone arriving at the crossroads of daily decision-making." Adding to your point, an underlying assumption is that you have excellent "deal flow," to so speak. If you are bombardment with great opportunities to invest your time, money or effort into then choosing selectively is optimal. If you are limited by enthusiasm, and/or availability of great opportunities (most of us are) then this is not optimal. This reminds me of top athlete's advice, often totally wrong for the average person. A top athlete might say that avoiding overtraining, and focusing on recovery is the most important thing. To them, getting really good regular workouts in is a given. To the average person, maintaining discipline, enthusiasm and not quitting are by far more important.
Mizza 6y ago
I have a very, very different definition of success than Warren Buffett does. I say yes to as much as I can, and my life has been extremely fun and interesting as a result. If I could do it again, I'd say yes more and I'd say yes faster.
- Kiro 6y ago
  I've done the opposite with an equally rewarding outcome. I used to say yes to so much just because of FOMO and social pressure. I then realized I actually didn't want to do any of that stuff and didn't have to. I'm finally happy and content with life.
  - cnity 6y ago
    This exchange highlights the uselessness of pithy one-liner self help remarks: they're interpreted according to what people have already experienced, and they're highly contextual.
  - lioeters 6y ago
    The above two parent comments' anecdata suggest that for different people, saying Yes to almost everything, or saying No, can have the same result: to be more sastified with how life is going. What's common between Yes and No is that they're both a deliberate act of choice, of having agency in deciding what happens. For myself, saying No and sticking to my preferences have yielded great results. For example, I hate phones and insist on emails - it's impractical, I know, but by giving firm No's, people respect my communication preference at work and personal life. On the other hand, there are some directions that I'd like to say more Yes to, to consciously open up possibilities. I suppose it comes down to knowing when to say Yes and No, and to act on it.
    - IggleSniggle 6y ago
      This. “Agency,” also called “ownership of decisions,” is really what all this talk of “saying yes” and “saying no” is all about. The can even include ownership of the decision to “just go with the flow and do whatever in the moment,” but the intentionality of that decision is essential.
landgenoot 6y ago
Really succesful people have enough power and f*ck you money to say no to almost anything.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
abhv 6y ago
These pithy rules and sayings make for clickbait. But nobody seems to give good examples of when they said no to focus. VCs like to brag about the "deals they missed" just to remind you that they were in the room where it happened, but then left the room.
- christophilus 6y ago
  If you read anything by Jason Fried, or watch some of his talks, you’ll get plenty of concrete examples.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  "Most successful people have one common behaviour: disseminate advice based on survivorship bias all the time."
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >These pithy rules and sayings make for clickbait Internet comment sections hate nuance and critical thinking (yes, even HN, we just put lipstick on that pig by being polite and kicking out snarky comments) so it's not surprising they love rules of thumb (which are nearly the polar opposite of applying critical thinking and considering nuances). "say no to X" "say yes to X" "always do X" "never do X" Etc. etc. etc.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  Steve Jobs was asked for an example at the D conference, and he said PDAs.
cvaidya1986 6y ago
"Focus is about saying no" - Steve Jobs. Hard lesson but true.
robertlagrant 6y ago
Author: Hi Mr Buffett, I'd like to speak to you about what you think most successful people do. Warren: No. <Hangs up> Author: Oh, crap. I need to pay some rent. <Writes "Warren Buffett says the most successful people say no to almost everything">
- mdonahoe 6y ago
  I doubt the author even got a direct line with Buffett. Really really successful people have handlers that say no to everything.
  - pilsetnieks 6y ago
    It's not a new quote. Quick googling shows it going around in hundreds of motivational type articles for at least a decade.
michael-ax 6y ago
i'm not getting distracted by this discussion.
known 6y ago
Instead of saying no directly we can use Japanese trick aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys
bad_user 6y ago
That may be, but it may not be a causal difference. Steve Jobs may have had to say no a lot, but that may be because he was presented with a lot of opportunities; opportunities that are less available to less successful people. I also imagine Steve Jobs didn't have a lot of time available. And I've read his biography. He didn't strike me as a man that said no very much when he was younger.
- Axsuul 6y ago
  Perhaps... say yes to everything so that you can learn what to say no to?
billman 6y ago
I refuse to read this article.
waylandsmithers 6y ago
> They say no to superficial networking events in which people swap business cards and never hear from one another. Why? Because successful people don't network. They build relationships. I've felt for a long time that there is no such thing as "networking" as its own activity. You build a network by just having life experiences and interests- hobbies, clubs, other parents from school if you have kids, religion, volunteering, side projects, alumni associations, and of course people you've worked with in the past. These relationships need to have some sort of basis other than you wanting something like a job or opportunities.
ornornor 6y ago
> Write down a list of your top 25 career goals. Really? other people have so many career goals? I’d be hard pressed to come up with more than 3 or maybe 5 tops. 25??
- qz2 6y ago
  Yeah. I have one. Get it over with so I can go and play with things undisturbed.
vmarius 6y ago
Well, you can name me the most successful person then.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  Dr. No
justforyou 6y ago
Warren Buffet happens to have made a lot of money, but is also unhealthy, unimaginative and quite limited in his understanding of the world. Why does his advice matter?
- brixon 6y ago
  You are proving out his point. He focuses on only a few things that work for him and is not paying attention to other stuff. When you say no to most things then you will by your own decisions have a very narrow view/experience of the world. That is the decision. Do you want to be super successful in one thing or a more balanced life.
cryptica 6y ago
I think there is an inversion of cause and effect here. People can afford to say no because they're successful. Saying no is not why they're successful. Poor people rarely get any opportunity at all so they're forced to say yes to every opportunity just to survive.
jungletime 6y ago
I own a business. If I was to do a full inventory, I would probably find I'm in the possession of tens of thousands of items. I'm currently in the situation where something breaks daily. It has forced me into being very picky. I no longer buy things, if I can avoid it. Every thing I buy has the potential of being a problem down the line that will require time and attention. Even disposing of broken things can be a big hassle. If I do buy something, brand new, I will take a close look at it and think about how it will fail. And try to reinforce those failure points. Minimalism is definitely a valid strategy, at large scales.
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  Yes once you own too much your possessions starts to own you.
  - jungletime 6y ago
    Yes so true. The golden toilet in Trump's 5th bedroom, has no practical utility to him. He never even uses it. In fact, its a liability. It will likely fail and flood his mansion eventually. If it serves a purpose, it is to be symbol of his wealth and power. Like a juggler, that juggles a sixth ball. To wow and impress. There is a point where all possessions become a liability. This is why I think rich people are sometimes caricatured as Scrooge McDucks. Every new possessions is a problem. So some overreact, and would rather just hold onto money to an extreme. A local billionaire patches his rusty international bridge with wood beams. Extremely rich people fascinate me, because their psychological faults, and inherent human pathology has the fuel to really flower.
    - nsxwolf 6y ago
      Great reminder, if you have a house with Too Many Toilets, go check on them now. And any other uncommonly used water fixtures.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      I agree with your point. In regard to this comment: > it is to be symbol of his wealth If this week’s papers are any guide, the symbolism has become more complex.
andy_ppp 6y ago
Which is the opposite of what a lot of successful people do right - they take loads of risks. It feels as though when you take risks and put yourself out there you deserve the rewards (but I would say this isn't really true either). If you have millions of opportunities like Buffet does of course this statement makes a lot of sense. I don't think applying Warren Buffet's aphorisms to life is a replicable strategy for success. Like most things making your own path is more important than even being successful in the terms that are important to Buffet or whoever really.
vmception 6y ago
If you are putting this man on a pedestal you have already lost.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
“Get out of bed!”
asdfman123 6y ago
But the important precondition is that you're working so hard that saying "no" gives you more time to work on what matters.
HPsquared 6y ago
Or, the most successful people are able to say no to almost everything.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Always question the arrow of causality.
pontus 6y ago
I think this is misleading advice. I'm sure it's true that when you have amazing opportunities thrown at you at every turn, it's important to stay true to your mission and be deliberate in choosing which ones to pursue. That being said, if you're just starting your career and have limited options and someone gives you an opportunity that is good but perhaps not in perfect alignment with what you ultimately want to achieve / do, you should probably still say yes. In other words, I would say that you should start your career saying yes to everything and end your career saying no to everything with some type of smooth interpolation between the two states.
- xibalba 6y ago
  I think this article slightly misinterprets Buffett a bit. In the broader context of his values and beliefs, I think this "rule" is about focus. Buffett (and Bill Gates) have cited focus as the single most important factor in their success. See also Buffett's 25/5 rule (he did not give it this name). Basically, Buffett's belief is that by not having extreme focus, you dilute your most important asset, time, to a degree that you are unable to accomplish something meaningful in any one area. His views on time and focus are pretty well captured by the snowball metaphor (with apologies to those who have never lived in colder climates): "Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill." In other words, w.r.t. this discussion, it doesn't work to be changing hills with any frequency.
  - pontus 6y ago
    Sure, but if you haven't even started your snowball yet, it may not be in your best interest to deeply scrutinize the length of the hill and the wetness of the snow until you find the perfect setup; it may just be better to get started with a snowball and then iterate as you're rolling it down the hill. I definitely think there's value in the entire "say no to almost everything" philosophy, it's just that I see it regurgitated without much thought all over the place. I'll meet someone who wants to be the next Bill Gates / Steve Jobs / ... / Elon Musk and who deliberately says no to everything been though they have no other options. They're just waiting for that perfect fit which may very well never come.
- 6y ago
sebastianconcpt 6y ago
So, here is the part that is important but omitted: Once you know what works for you and you found how to do it efficiently, then you say no to almost everything. Which is something any toddler knows but since the first part is absent, the second can't happen in order to make the first one to be even possible to be found.
skohan 6y ago
This assumes you already have a lot of people coming to you with attractive opportunities you can say no to.
tehjoker 6y ago
Successful people like Buffett are presented with opportunities constantly. There's some truth here, but his circumstances are radically different. That's why for people at the bottom the advice is to say yes to more things!
- vivekd 6y ago
  Agreed, there may be a cause effect fallacy going on here. Sucessful people have lots of people asking for things so they are forced to narrow more where newer people trying to get established have to take what they can get
bluedays 6y ago
Just sent this to my wife. She's gonna love this.
dbg31415 6y ago
Also... man, as a junior staff member, the opposite is true. Establish yourself as someone capable, eager, and motivated. Don't come in to a new org and be like, "No, I'm going to be successful by telling people no." Oof. This advice is really for senior people, and it's to prioritize so you get the important things done.
hinkley 6y ago
I can barely recall a time in my life where saying 'no' to an exploding offer resulted in regret. I'm not sure when I learned this 'power'. I don't think it should be a power, but I know way too many people who don't have it, and watched a number of them go through a bunch of bad excitement followed by regret. If it's not someone including you in a spontaneous social activity at the last minute, just say no. They know that if you have time to think about it you'd realize it wasn't that great, which is exactly why they aren't giving you time to think about it. It's an attempt to evoke the same feeling of scarcity you experience when your buddy says, "Hey there are only three beers left. Who wants one?" to a room full of people.
- jacurtis 6y ago
  I am one of those people who struggle to say no. Just this year, I consciously started saying "no" to people more frequently because I was getting overstretched with commitments and knew I needed to stop. So far I have never regretted saying "no" to something (even though I suspected I might regret it at the time). But I have frequently regretted saying "yes" to something. By saying no to more things, it allows you to have more time to do a good job at the few things you say "yes" to. Plus there is a power in taking your life by the reins and not letting other people dictate what you do because you blanket accept everything they request of you.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Exploding offers... yeah. They come as "limited time offers" all the time. "Deal of a lifetime", even. It's amazing - once in a lifetime offers come every six months. Just because someone says it's a once in a lifetime offer, it's still the exact same offer. The words "once in a lifetime" do not change the offer whatsoever. If the answer is no, it shouldn't become yes just because someone says "once in a lifetime".
  - csa 6y ago
    Meh... Sometimes exploding offers are exploitative. Sometimes they are simply “You are plan A, and we are going with plan B if you say no. Plan B is not an evergreen option for us, so we have to put a time limit on our offer to you.”
AzzieElbab 6y ago
I think what he means is that people who are already really successful have so many options they get to pick only the best ones.
nlh 6y ago
I've been thinking a lot about this a related topic lately -- how much of our lives and the things we find ourselves doing are tasks that are imposed upon us by others. I'm trying to come up with strategies to minimize this, which I guess is related to "saying no" to a lot of things. But I'm not sure the ideal path. Let me give some (non-work) examples: I flew back from Europe on Wednesday, and the airline misplaced my luggage. To get it back, they've imposed a ton of steps on ME. "Here's your reference number. Call our customer support in 24 hours. Follow-up every day until you get it" is what I was told (and what I'll have to do). It seems unfair that an act that was 0% my fault results in at least several hours of tasks for me. I have to follow-up. I have to wait on hold. I have to spend time thinking and wondering if my luggage will ever show up. How do we avoid this? Getting angry doesn't work (trust me, they've been yelled at). Ignoring it doesn't work - no luggage will show up. So I guess the only real solution would be to have a personal assistant or otherwise hire someone to deal with situation like this for me? That seems out of reach for most people. All sorts of things are like that -- if someone sues you, they've imposed literally dozens of hours of work and thousands of dollars of expenses on you entirely without your say. You can delegate as much as you want to a lawyer, but you'll still need to gather documents, think about strategies, and of course pay your lawyer. So how does one really truly say "no" to things & delegate undesirable tasks unless one has enough money to afford such delegation? I'm not sure I have a good answer to this one yet. Thoughts?
- msapaydin 6y ago
  I guess there are things that are inevitable, the trick is not to try to completely eliminate them as that is impossible. However the optional ones could be eliminated if one has some practice of doing the trade-off analysis and perhaps deliberate poverty practice, and with some luck could become wealthy enough to be able to delegate even the most difficult to eliminate tasks to one's assistant.
- antman 6y ago
  I lost my luggage flying Lufthansa in Europe. I gave them an address at the airport, they found and sent it next day at the hotel.
- 6y ago
ponker 6y ago
I say yes to almost everything. I’m massively unsuccessful. But I’ve had an interesting life.
- PunchTornado 6y ago
  good ending
supernova87a 6y ago
You know the problem with advice from rich/already successful people? They operate within the environment that dozens of people daily are coming up to them and giving them opportunities to choose among new ventures, investing opportunities, charities to lead, ways to spend their money. Of course, duh, if that's your life, then go ahead and pick and choose, pass up things that others offer you, making your life only better and more focused. The problem is they forget when they were hungry, unrecognized, struggling-to-make-their-name, more-time-than-money people. When no one was knocking on their door wanting to talk to them. When they were saddled with thousands in student loan debt maybe. Or maybe they were never any of these things. The normal person is starved for opportunities to advance, to be recognized, to try out new things. The average Joe doesn't get a lot of things to say "no" to. The average person doesn't have a life mission of what to do with their vast wealth and time remaining on Earth, like a Warren Buffett does. Sure, feel absolutely free to say no to fixing GM cars because your passion is Aston Martins, or how about not waiting tables today because you really want to be a cook? Or, for that matter, saying that you don't want this group of Jira tickets on infrastructure because you really want to do UI? Hm? For many (maybe most) people, life is a combination of random walks that you say "yes" to many of the paths you come across, and hope that it leads you somewhere good. Having choices is a luxury. Don't forget that. I will say that yes, you should have perspective and opinion about what you want to do, and not want to do in life, and what paths you want to go down. And you should work every day to build up the ability to have choices. But most people operate within far more constraints than these celebrities and don't have such luxury to be passing up new opportunities. This is like lottery winners telling people how to succeed in life. Fun, but dangerous for the average listener. You go and try being as obnoxious and choosing to focus as Steve Jobs, and please report back...
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  I'm a former homemaker who is desperately poor, but my life works vastly better than it is supposed to. Numbers six and seven in the article very much resonate with me: 6. They say no to giving the steering wheel of life to anyone else. Another Buffett quote affirms this: "You've gotta keep control of your time and you can't unless you say no. You can't let people set your agenda in life." 7. They say no to people-pleasing. Successful people don't neglect their deepest wishes and desires to accommodate and yield to others' wishes and desires. As a woman, I find that pretty much everyone thinks I should do stuff for them "out of the goodness of my heart" and, no, it doesn't come back to me as career networking or some crap. I was literally homeless for years and people would be all gushy about what a wonderful person I was and how much value I added to both HN and other forums and then be all basically "STFU and stop whining at me, you worthless bitch" if I was all "That's great, but I can't fucking afford to eat. Can I get some help trying to establish an income here if you think I'm so wonderful?" Nope. Absolutely not. So one of the ways I have slowly begun making my life work is by walking away from a zillion opportunities to be a chump and be helpful to people who will never, ever, ever, ever do a fucking thing in return for me. It hasn't made me a millionaire, but I have saved millions on what my medical condition is supposed to cost, so it is clearly worth real money and never mind how dirt poor I remain, in part due to rampant and blatant sexism while everyone acts like I am higher than a kite for pointing that fact out.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
csommers 6y ago
This is true, but the balancing act between when to push back and when to say yes is VERY minute for many situations. Unfortunately, this comes with experience and many don’t learn it (if at all) until later in life.
joelthelion 6y ago
On the other hand, I've met a bunch of really average people who think saying no all the time makes them the next Steve Jobs. It's very annoying.
KerryJones 6y ago
It should be noted that this is from 2018 (not saying it's less relevant, but adding it to the title seems important)
return1 6y ago
No they do not
jxramos 6y ago
Reminds me of an old interview with Scott McNealy You don't have time in real life to be perfect at everything, and you'd better get a lot of things done. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Betting_It_All/H22OZl0H3PsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Betting%20It%20All%20scott%20mcnealy%20%22to%20do%20perfect%20at%20everything%22 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Betting_It_All/H22OZl0H...
ticmasta 6y ago
"Already successful famous billionaires say no to almost everything" Advice that doesn't really help the rest of us, much ...
devmunchies 6y ago
Funny, I realized this week that being productive (e.g. doing the dishes) was less about motivating myself and more about saying no to laziness and procrastination (mindlessly browsing Netflix or HN).
epx 6y ago
Family, relatives and friends can be huge sources of distraction, if you can't say no. I know many people that should be a lot better off in life given their merits, but they are weighed down by an endless parade of other people asking things (help, money, counsel). Their WhatsApps beep every minute without fail. Yet they are incapable of even muting the damn phone for a while.
sunstone 6y ago
Sure like "Intel" and "IBM" would be a good place to start :)
mud_dauber 6y ago
I used to work for a chip design company whose CEO would ask every for new product ideas at every annual sales meeting and said no to every one for 7 years straight. Now his product pipeline has run out of gas. His stock is in the toilet and new hires won't touch his company. Karma.
gcc_programmer 6y ago
Listening to Warren Buffet is as useful as playing the lottery.
fullshark 6y ago
Nonsense. Really successful people have the opportunity to say no to almost everything, and do so because their time is so valuable.
wyclif 6y ago
It's been posted here before, but Derek Sivers has a similar line to the ones Jobs and Buffett used: "If you're not feeling 'hell yeah!', then say no." https://sive.rs/hyn https://sive.rs/hyn
davegri 6y ago
I'm not saying this is definitely intended, but it kind of bothers me that this title seems to imply "Saying no to almost everything might make you successful".

350 points by Oras 6y ago

Honestly I think this is entirely counter-productive for anyone that's not mega-rich. If you're Warren Buffet, of course you'll have a thousand offers and propositions a day and you have to say no to most of them and find that one gem. If you're regular Joe (and, yes, that most likely includes YOU reading this) you can't afford to shut down most opportunities or you'll never get anywhere.

christophilus 6y ago
I don’t think that’s true. Almost every project I’ve been on had most of its major problems due to folks’ inability to say no. Most of the people in my life who are overworked and hurried are that way because they can’t say no. The happiest people I know have great boundaries and say no all the time. Anecdotal, but my experience has been that “no” is one of the most useful words in my vocabulary.
- bumby 6y ago
  I think the sentiment really comes down to prioritizing before trying to execute within the resource constraints. This can apply to any level and I see low-tier employees shooting themselves in the foot from a productivity standpoint because they have an inability to prioritize their efforts effectively
tinyhouse 6y ago
I disagree. We all have many opportunities to say no. You know how much time I spent working on projects that didn't go anywhere and were a complete waste of time and money? (not mine, my employer's). I didn't say no. My manager didn't say no. Their manager didn't say no. You may say that's part of being successful, many things fail but a few stick and make it big. That's true but often the writing is on the wall but people ignore it. One thing I do agree is that not everyone can say no. For example, if you're a software engineer in a big company, you might not have much say. That's why it's important to get yourself into a position where you have more control on the things you work on. Not easy but you don't need to be Buffet to achieve that.
nimblegorilla 6y ago
> If you're regular Joe (and, yes, that most likely includes YOU reading this) you can't afford to shut down most opportunities or you'll never get anywhere. Anyone with software development skills gets tons of low quality app ideas from friends and family. And tons of other opportunities from recruiters paying below market. It's hard walking away from a sort-of-ok opportunity when you don't have anything going on, but I've learned there are always more things coming up.
jfengel 6y ago
In general I think it's a bad idea to take advice from successful people. There's a thing that goes around, a piece by Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes[1], talking about how great it was to quit his safe job and become a cartoonist. Except... how many famous cartoonists are there? How many other people quit their advertising job and just failed? If each of their stories were circulated as much, would we see this swamped by a thousand heartbreaking memes instead? Doing what Warren Buffett does works very well for Warren Buffett. The odds are good that it won't work for you. "Choose the right things" is pretty vacuous advice. [1] https://highexistence.com/images/view/illustrated-advice-from-bill-watterson-creator-of-calvin-and-hobbes/ https://highexistence.com/images/view/illustrated-advice-fro...
- thehappypm 6y ago
  Bo Burnham says the same thing. He’s talented and taking advice from him is akin to following the advice of buying lottery tickets.
  - justinmeiners 6y ago
    Do you think being good at something and successfully selling or marketing your work is like buying a lottery ticket?
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Sometimes, yeah. Comedy is one such example: it gives huge rewards to a few celebrities, while a lot of other equally talented people just never manage to be in the right place at the right time. It's perhaps especially true for comedy. You can see it when you watch a comic on TV: they're much less funny than in person, because you're not surrounded by a lot of other laughing people. The same routine by the same person can get little more than snickers when done at somebody's open mic night -- unless somebody recognizes that they're famous. Celebrity reinforces itself. Burnham is very talented and I'm sure he worked like crazy to market his work. But he will also tell you the names of a hundred others who are equally talented and worked equally hard, but you've never heard of them. The market for celebrity is very fickle, heaping huge rewards on a few, but drop off rapidly for people who aren't in the hump of the long tail. Warren Buffett isn't profiting from celebrity in the same sense, but there's a similar effect where the biggest winners are lucky as well as smart. Their advice often doesn't take that into account, and it's important to measure that in your appetite for risk.
PaulHoule 6y ago
A picture of Warren Buffet is a "dog whistle" you see on Yahoo Finance and other web sites aimed at people of a "certain age". It's like the hypnotic induction (to make you connect to your identity as a consumer) that starts with talking about "our smartphones". For a long time I would wind up seeing Becky Quick interview Buffet a few times a year on CNBC, it got cringeworthy when his dementia got worse and he started to leer at her. (Becky Quick is a "babe") Once upon a time he was a genius investor, but he's not what he used to be and they don't have a successor in the works. For me, I deleted my LinkedIn account recently because it had brought a remarkable number of time-wasters into my life.
- eatbitseveryday 6y ago
  > when his dementia got worse Source? > don't have a successor in the works. Source?
ssully 6y ago
Just picturing how long I would last at my job if I just said no to every task I was assigned.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Between billboards, internet ads, radio commercials, spam, and telemarketing calls, I don't get a thousand offers a day, but I might get a hundred. Of course, it's easier to say no to most of those, since they're not actually things I want. They're just garbage offers. But even of the ones I want... There are many places offering to sell me lunch today, and there are several places where I'd be interested in eating lunch. I can only eat one lunch today, though. So I think we have the same thing, just with much smaller offers.

xupybd 6y ago

As a people pleaser I find this very challenging. But also very true I've seen the damage this has done to my own career.

xiphias2 6y ago
The question is: do you really want a life similar to Warren Buffet or Steve Jobs? If you are a people pleaser, probably not. I'm more in the successful category, but it meant that I gave up having a social life. Most of us have to choose.
- xupybd 6y ago
  I find I give up my social life to work long hours as a people pleaser. Also I end up doing the low visibility low reward tasks that no one else wants. Just to be a team player. Then appear as a low performer compared to the guy that refuses to do anything that doesn't praise.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Have you talked about it with your manager? If he/she doesn't help you, the best thing is to switch teams (start talking with other people who you helped outside your own team). If that's not possible, start interviewing with other companies without mentioning it to your current colleagues. I have a friend who was doing the same thing as you, went to another team inside the same company, and actually the same kind of thinking that you have (helping other people) helped him get multiple promotions, and he's a team leader with a nice salary, and his team loves him. Also one more thing: he was using an old language, that's why he was afraid of switching teams. I suggested him to learn any modern language used inside his company to have leverage to be able to switch company if he wants...he just needed to get a bit outside his comfort zone, after that everything came for him (he's still with the same company, but he's happy now).
  - loopz 6y ago
    You just found out why only 1% can be 10-20X anything.

pferde 6y ago

The important thing to keep in mind here is that Buffett is talking about "saying no to almost everything" when you are already successful. Not when you're actually still in the process of becoming successful. The rules are different there, although of course Jobs' quote about focus, I think, applies to both situations, to some extent. EDIT: Grammar.

_trampeltier 6y ago
He does not just "no", he know his time is finite. As long you have (free) time, then yes, you might say yes to something more. But as more you climb the ladder up, the more people come to you with all kind of things. And then even if you would like, there is not enought time and energy in a person to do everything for everybody. I guess, thats a reason why people burn out. Even when people work so hard, if you say yes to everything, there is no chance ever to finish your many many tasks. Learning to say "no" is very important.

d--b 6y ago

Well, I'm choosing to say no to try being that successful. Cause I don't want to say no to a million things and find out that I'm not cut for being Steve Jobs in the first place.

boltefnovor 6y ago

Advice from rich people is useful for other rich people.

Mvandenbergh 6y ago

Hold on. Here's what he said: "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything." That's very different. This is a message that is useful to hear for extremely driven ambitious people who are already successful - that it's better to spend all the time you spend working on a few carefully chosen things. It should not be interpreted as advice for people who are not extremely driven to not do things. The baseline assumption is that you already spend a substantial amount of time working on potentially productive things.

apatters 6y ago
That's part of it but I think it's more complicated than that. For instance I have heard b2b sales described as a diagnostic process. If you know exactly what you can deliver and it matches exactly what the customer needs you encourage them to say yes. It will likely go very well and then the relationship will grow over time. Otherwise you thank them for the opportunity and move on. The same arguably applies to all business deals and doesn't have much to do with your current level of success. If you pursue the right opportunities you will do well. I know people who have struggled for years because they consistently went after the wrong opportunities. The difficult part of course is being able to tell the difference!
- pbronez 6y ago
  Interesting point about B2B as a diagnostic process. I reached a similar conclusion organically but didn’t have that language for it. Essentially, I’ve found that saying “based on your description of your challenge, the product I have today isn’t a good fit” buys you a ton of credibility for when you DO have a good solution available.
netcan 6y ago
...and the article seems to directly contradict this point: "Whether he meant saying no in the investment sense is not so important; what is important is that his advice, in whatever context, can apply to anyone arriving at the crossroads of daily decision-making." Adding to your point, an underlying assumption is that you have excellent "deal flow," to so speak. If you are bombardment with great opportunities to invest your time, money or effort into then choosing selectively is optimal. If you are limited by enthusiasm, and/or availability of great opportunities (most of us are) then this is not optimal. This reminds me of top athlete's advice, often totally wrong for the average person. A top athlete might say that avoiding overtraining, and focusing on recovery is the most important thing. To them, getting really good regular workouts in is a given. To the average person, maintaining discipline, enthusiasm and not quitting are by far more important.

Mizza 6y ago

I have a very, very different definition of success than Warren Buffett does. I say yes to as much as I can, and my life has been extremely fun and interesting as a result. If I could do it again, I'd say yes more and I'd say yes faster.

Kiro 6y ago
I've done the opposite with an equally rewarding outcome. I used to say yes to so much just because of FOMO and social pressure. I then realized I actually didn't want to do any of that stuff and didn't have to. I'm finally happy and content with life.
- cnity 6y ago
  This exchange highlights the uselessness of pithy one-liner self help remarks: they're interpreted according to what people have already experienced, and they're highly contextual.
- lioeters 6y ago
  The above two parent comments' anecdata suggest that for different people, saying Yes to almost everything, or saying No, can have the same result: to be more sastified with how life is going. What's common between Yes and No is that they're both a deliberate act of choice, of having agency in deciding what happens. For myself, saying No and sticking to my preferences have yielded great results. For example, I hate phones and insist on emails - it's impractical, I know, but by giving firm No's, people respect my communication preference at work and personal life. On the other hand, there are some directions that I'd like to say more Yes to, to consciously open up possibilities. I suppose it comes down to knowing when to say Yes and No, and to act on it.
  - IggleSniggle 6y ago
    This. “Agency,” also called “ownership of decisions,” is really what all this talk of “saying yes” and “saying no” is all about. The can even include ownership of the decision to “just go with the flow and do whatever in the moment,” but the intentionality of that decision is essential.

landgenoot 6y ago

Really succesful people have enough power and f*ck you money to say no to almost anything.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

abhv 6y ago

These pithy rules and sayings make for clickbait. But nobody seems to give good examples of when they said no to focus. VCs like to brag about the "deals they missed" just to remind you that they were in the room where it happened, but then left the room.

christophilus 6y ago
If you read anything by Jason Fried, or watch some of his talks, you’ll get plenty of concrete examples.
robertlagrant 6y ago
"Most successful people have one common behaviour: disseminate advice based on survivorship bias all the time."
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>These pithy rules and sayings make for clickbait Internet comment sections hate nuance and critical thinking (yes, even HN, we just put lipstick on that pig by being polite and kicking out snarky comments) so it's not surprising they love rules of thumb (which are nearly the polar opposite of applying critical thinking and considering nuances). "say no to X" "say yes to X" "always do X" "never do X" Etc. etc. etc.
Austin_Conlon 6y ago
Steve Jobs was asked for an example at the D conference, and he said PDAs.

cvaidya1986 6y ago

"Focus is about saying no" - Steve Jobs. Hard lesson but true.

robertlagrant 6y ago

Author: Hi Mr Buffett, I'd like to speak to you about what you think most successful people do. Warren: No. <Hangs up> Author: Oh, crap. I need to pay some rent. <Writes "Warren Buffett says the most successful people say no to almost everything">

mdonahoe 6y ago
I doubt the author even got a direct line with Buffett. Really really successful people have handlers that say no to everything.
- pilsetnieks 6y ago
  It's not a new quote. Quick googling shows it going around in hundreds of motivational type articles for at least a decade.

michael-ax 6y ago

i'm not getting distracted by this discussion.

known 6y ago

Instead of saying no directly we can use Japanese trick aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys

bad_user 6y ago

That may be, but it may not be a causal difference. Steve Jobs may have had to say no a lot, but that may be because he was presented with a lot of opportunities; opportunities that are less available to less successful people. I also imagine Steve Jobs didn't have a lot of time available. And I've read his biography. He didn't strike me as a man that said no very much when he was younger.

Axsuul 6y ago
Perhaps... say yes to everything so that you can learn what to say no to?

billman 6y ago

I refuse to read this article.

waylandsmithers 6y ago

> They say no to superficial networking events in which people swap business cards and never hear from one another. Why? Because successful people don't network. They build relationships. I've felt for a long time that there is no such thing as "networking" as its own activity. You build a network by just having life experiences and interests- hobbies, clubs, other parents from school if you have kids, religion, volunteering, side projects, alumni associations, and of course people you've worked with in the past. These relationships need to have some sort of basis other than you wanting something like a job or opportunities.

ornornor 6y ago

> Write down a list of your top 25 career goals. Really? other people have so many career goals? I’d be hard pressed to come up with more than 3 or maybe 5 tops. 25??

qz2 6y ago
Yeah. I have one. Get it over with so I can go and play with things undisturbed.

vmarius 6y ago

Well, you can name me the most successful person then.

HenryKissinger 6y ago
Dr. No

justforyou 6y ago

Warren Buffet happens to have made a lot of money, but is also unhealthy, unimaginative and quite limited in his understanding of the world. Why does his advice matter?

brixon 6y ago
You are proving out his point. He focuses on only a few things that work for him and is not paying attention to other stuff. When you say no to most things then you will by your own decisions have a very narrow view/experience of the world. That is the decision. Do you want to be super successful in one thing or a more balanced life.

cryptica 6y ago

I think there is an inversion of cause and effect here. People can afford to say no because they're successful. Saying no is not why they're successful. Poor people rarely get any opportunity at all so they're forced to say yes to every opportunity just to survive.

jungletime 6y ago

I own a business. If I was to do a full inventory, I would probably find I'm in the possession of tens of thousands of items. I'm currently in the situation where something breaks daily. It has forced me into being very picky. I no longer buy things, if I can avoid it. Every thing I buy has the potential of being a problem down the line that will require time and attention. Even disposing of broken things can be a big hassle. If I do buy something, brand new, I will take a close look at it and think about how it will fail. And try to reinforce those failure points. Minimalism is definitely a valid strategy, at large scales.

jmnicolas 6y ago
Yes once you own too much your possessions starts to own you.
- jungletime 6y ago
  Yes so true. The golden toilet in Trump's 5th bedroom, has no practical utility to him. He never even uses it. In fact, its a liability. It will likely fail and flood his mansion eventually. If it serves a purpose, it is to be symbol of his wealth and power. Like a juggler, that juggles a sixth ball. To wow and impress. There is a point where all possessions become a liability. This is why I think rich people are sometimes caricatured as Scrooge McDucks. Every new possessions is a problem. So some overreact, and would rather just hold onto money to an extreme. A local billionaire patches his rusty international bridge with wood beams. Extremely rich people fascinate me, because their psychological faults, and inherent human pathology has the fuel to really flower.
  - nsxwolf 6y ago
    Great reminder, if you have a house with Too Many Toilets, go check on them now. And any other uncommonly used water fixtures.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    I agree with your point. In regard to this comment: > it is to be symbol of his wealth If this week’s papers are any guide, the symbolism has become more complex.

andy_ppp 6y ago

Which is the opposite of what a lot of successful people do right - they take loads of risks. It feels as though when you take risks and put yourself out there you deserve the rewards (but I would say this isn't really true either). If you have millions of opportunities like Buffet does of course this statement makes a lot of sense. I don't think applying Warren Buffet's aphorisms to life is a replicable strategy for success. Like most things making your own path is more important than even being successful in the terms that are important to Buffet or whoever really.

vmception 6y ago

If you are putting this man on a pedestal you have already lost.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

“Get out of bed!”

asdfman123 6y ago

But the important precondition is that you're working so hard that saying "no" gives you more time to work on what matters.

HPsquared 6y ago

Or, the most successful people are able to say no to almost everything.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Always question the arrow of causality.

pontus 6y ago

I think this is misleading advice. I'm sure it's true that when you have amazing opportunities thrown at you at every turn, it's important to stay true to your mission and be deliberate in choosing which ones to pursue. That being said, if you're just starting your career and have limited options and someone gives you an opportunity that is good but perhaps not in perfect alignment with what you ultimately want to achieve / do, you should probably still say yes. In other words, I would say that you should start your career saying yes to everything and end your career saying no to everything with some type of smooth interpolation between the two states.

xibalba 6y ago
I think this article slightly misinterprets Buffett a bit. In the broader context of his values and beliefs, I think this "rule" is about focus. Buffett (and Bill Gates) have cited focus as the single most important factor in their success. See also Buffett's 25/5 rule (he did not give it this name). Basically, Buffett's belief is that by not having extreme focus, you dilute your most important asset, time, to a degree that you are unable to accomplish something meaningful in any one area. His views on time and focus are pretty well captured by the snowball metaphor (with apologies to those who have never lived in colder climates): "Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill." In other words, w.r.t. this discussion, it doesn't work to be changing hills with any frequency.
- pontus 6y ago
  Sure, but if you haven't even started your snowball yet, it may not be in your best interest to deeply scrutinize the length of the hill and the wetness of the snow until you find the perfect setup; it may just be better to get started with a snowball and then iterate as you're rolling it down the hill. I definitely think there's value in the entire "say no to almost everything" philosophy, it's just that I see it regurgitated without much thought all over the place. I'll meet someone who wants to be the next Bill Gates / Steve Jobs / ... / Elon Musk and who deliberately says no to everything been though they have no other options. They're just waiting for that perfect fit which may very well never come.
6y ago

sebastianconcpt 6y ago

So, here is the part that is important but omitted: Once you know what works for you and you found how to do it efficiently, then you say no to almost everything. Which is something any toddler knows but since the first part is absent, the second can't happen in order to make the first one to be even possible to be found.

skohan 6y ago

This assumes you already have a lot of people coming to you with attractive opportunities you can say no to.

tehjoker 6y ago

Successful people like Buffett are presented with opportunities constantly. There's some truth here, but his circumstances are radically different. That's why for people at the bottom the advice is to say yes to more things!

vivekd 6y ago
Agreed, there may be a cause effect fallacy going on here. Sucessful people have lots of people asking for things so they are forced to narrow more where newer people trying to get established have to take what they can get

bluedays 6y ago

Just sent this to my wife. She's gonna love this.

dbg31415 6y ago

Also... man, as a junior staff member, the opposite is true. Establish yourself as someone capable, eager, and motivated. Don't come in to a new org and be like, "No, I'm going to be successful by telling people no." Oof. This advice is really for senior people, and it's to prioritize so you get the important things done.

hinkley 6y ago

I can barely recall a time in my life where saying 'no' to an exploding offer resulted in regret. I'm not sure when I learned this 'power'. I don't think it should be a power, but I know way too many people who don't have it, and watched a number of them go through a bunch of bad excitement followed by regret. If it's not someone including you in a spontaneous social activity at the last minute, just say no. They know that if you have time to think about it you'd realize it wasn't that great, which is exactly why they aren't giving you time to think about it. It's an attempt to evoke the same feeling of scarcity you experience when your buddy says, "Hey there are only three beers left. Who wants one?" to a room full of people.

jacurtis 6y ago
I am one of those people who struggle to say no. Just this year, I consciously started saying "no" to people more frequently because I was getting overstretched with commitments and knew I needed to stop. So far I have never regretted saying "no" to something (even though I suspected I might regret it at the time). But I have frequently regretted saying "yes" to something. By saying no to more things, it allows you to have more time to do a good job at the few things you say "yes" to. Plus there is a power in taking your life by the reins and not letting other people dictate what you do because you blanket accept everything they request of you.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Exploding offers... yeah. They come as "limited time offers" all the time. "Deal of a lifetime", even. It's amazing - once in a lifetime offers come every six months. Just because someone says it's a once in a lifetime offer, it's still the exact same offer. The words "once in a lifetime" do not change the offer whatsoever. If the answer is no, it shouldn't become yes just because someone says "once in a lifetime".
- csa 6y ago
  Meh... Sometimes exploding offers are exploitative. Sometimes they are simply “You are plan A, and we are going with plan B if you say no. Plan B is not an evergreen option for us, so we have to put a time limit on our offer to you.”

AzzieElbab 6y ago

I think what he means is that people who are already really successful have so many options they get to pick only the best ones.

nlh 6y ago

I've been thinking a lot about this a related topic lately -- how much of our lives and the things we find ourselves doing are tasks that are imposed upon us by others. I'm trying to come up with strategies to minimize this, which I guess is related to "saying no" to a lot of things. But I'm not sure the ideal path. Let me give some (non-work) examples: I flew back from Europe on Wednesday, and the airline misplaced my luggage. To get it back, they've imposed a ton of steps on ME. "Here's your reference number. Call our customer support in 24 hours. Follow-up every day until you get it" is what I was told (and what I'll have to do). It seems unfair that an act that was 0% my fault results in at least several hours of tasks for me. I have to follow-up. I have to wait on hold. I have to spend time thinking and wondering if my luggage will ever show up. How do we avoid this? Getting angry doesn't work (trust me, they've been yelled at). Ignoring it doesn't work - no luggage will show up. So I guess the only real solution would be to have a personal assistant or otherwise hire someone to deal with situation like this for me? That seems out of reach for most people. All sorts of things are like that -- if someone sues you, they've imposed literally dozens of hours of work and thousands of dollars of expenses on you entirely without your say. You can delegate as much as you want to a lawyer, but you'll still need to gather documents, think about strategies, and of course pay your lawyer. So how does one really truly say "no" to things & delegate undesirable tasks unless one has enough money to afford such delegation? I'm not sure I have a good answer to this one yet. Thoughts?

msapaydin 6y ago
I guess there are things that are inevitable, the trick is not to try to completely eliminate them as that is impossible. However the optional ones could be eliminated if one has some practice of doing the trade-off analysis and perhaps deliberate poverty practice, and with some luck could become wealthy enough to be able to delegate even the most difficult to eliminate tasks to one's assistant.
antman 6y ago
I lost my luggage flying Lufthansa in Europe. I gave them an address at the airport, they found and sent it next day at the hotel.
6y ago

ponker 6y ago

I say yes to almost everything. I’m massively unsuccessful. But I’ve had an interesting life.

PunchTornado 6y ago
good ending

supernova87a 6y ago

You know the problem with advice from rich/already successful people? They operate within the environment that dozens of people daily are coming up to them and giving them opportunities to choose among new ventures, investing opportunities, charities to lead, ways to spend their money. Of course, duh, if that's your life, then go ahead and pick and choose, pass up things that others offer you, making your life only better and more focused. The problem is they forget when they were hungry, unrecognized, struggling-to-make-their-name, more-time-than-money people. When no one was knocking on their door wanting to talk to them. When they were saddled with thousands in student loan debt maybe. Or maybe they were never any of these things. The normal person is starved for opportunities to advance, to be recognized, to try out new things. The average Joe doesn't get a lot of things to say "no" to. The average person doesn't have a life mission of what to do with their vast wealth and time remaining on Earth, like a Warren Buffett does. Sure, feel absolutely free to say no to fixing GM cars because your passion is Aston Martins, or how about not waiting tables today because you really want to be a cook? Or, for that matter, saying that you don't want this group of Jira tickets on infrastructure because you really want to do UI? Hm? For many (maybe most) people, life is a combination of random walks that you say "yes" to many of the paths you come across, and hope that it leads you somewhere good. Having choices is a luxury. Don't forget that. I will say that yes, you should have perspective and opinion about what you want to do, and not want to do in life, and what paths you want to go down. And you should work every day to build up the ability to have choices. But most people operate within far more constraints than these celebrities and don't have such luxury to be passing up new opportunities. This is like lottery winners telling people how to succeed in life. Fun, but dangerous for the average listener. You go and try being as obnoxious and choosing to focus as Steve Jobs, and please report back...

DoreenMichele 6y ago
I'm a former homemaker who is desperately poor, but my life works vastly better than it is supposed to. Numbers six and seven in the article very much resonate with me: 6. They say no to giving the steering wheel of life to anyone else. Another Buffett quote affirms this: "You've gotta keep control of your time and you can't unless you say no. You can't let people set your agenda in life." 7. They say no to people-pleasing. Successful people don't neglect their deepest wishes and desires to accommodate and yield to others' wishes and desires. As a woman, I find that pretty much everyone thinks I should do stuff for them "out of the goodness of my heart" and, no, it doesn't come back to me as career networking or some crap. I was literally homeless for years and people would be all gushy about what a wonderful person I was and how much value I added to both HN and other forums and then be all basically "STFU and stop whining at me, you worthless bitch" if I was all "That's great, but I can't fucking afford to eat. Can I get some help trying to establish an income here if you think I'm so wonderful?" Nope. Absolutely not. So one of the ways I have slowly begun making my life work is by walking away from a zillion opportunities to be a chump and be helpful to people who will never, ever, ever, ever do a fucking thing in return for me. It hasn't made me a millionaire, but I have saved millions on what my medical condition is supposed to cost, so it is clearly worth real money and never mind how dirt poor I remain, in part due to rampant and blatant sexism while everyone acts like I am higher than a kite for pointing that fact out.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

csommers 6y ago

This is true, but the balancing act between when to push back and when to say yes is VERY minute for many situations. Unfortunately, this comes with experience and many don’t learn it (if at all) until later in life.

joelthelion 6y ago

On the other hand, I've met a bunch of really average people who think saying no all the time makes them the next Steve Jobs. It's very annoying.

KerryJones 6y ago

It should be noted that this is from 2018 (not saying it's less relevant, but adding it to the title seems important)

return1 6y ago

No they do not

jxramos 6y ago

Reminds me of an old interview with Scott McNealy You don't have time in real life to be perfect at everything, and you'd better get a lot of things done. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Betting_It_All/H22OZl0H3PsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Betting%20It%20All%20scott%20mcnealy%20%22to%20do%20perfect%20at%20everything%22 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Betting_It_All/H22OZl0H...

ticmasta 6y ago

"Already successful famous billionaires say no to almost everything" Advice that doesn't really help the rest of us, much ...

devmunchies 6y ago

Funny, I realized this week that being productive (e.g. doing the dishes) was less about motivating myself and more about saying no to laziness and procrastination (mindlessly browsing Netflix or HN).

epx 6y ago

Family, relatives and friends can be huge sources of distraction, if you can't say no. I know many people that should be a lot better off in life given their merits, but they are weighed down by an endless parade of other people asking things (help, money, counsel). Their WhatsApps beep every minute without fail. Yet they are incapable of even muting the damn phone for a while.

sunstone 6y ago

Sure like "Intel" and "IBM" would be a good place to start :)

mud_dauber 6y ago

I used to work for a chip design company whose CEO would ask every for new product ideas at every annual sales meeting and said no to every one for 7 years straight. Now his product pipeline has run out of gas. His stock is in the toilet and new hires won't touch his company. Karma.

gcc_programmer 6y ago

Listening to Warren Buffet is as useful as playing the lottery.

fullshark 6y ago

Nonsense. Really successful people have the opportunity to say no to almost everything, and do so because their time is so valuable.

wyclif 6y ago

It's been posted here before, but Derek Sivers has a similar line to the ones Jobs and Buffett used: "If you're not feeling 'hell yeah!', then say no." https://sive.rs/hyn https://sive.rs/hyn

davegri 6y ago

I'm not saying this is definitely intended, but it kind of bothers me that this title seems to imply "Saying no to almost everything might make you successful".