This was the year I've truly learned to say No to things, and now I can't stop. I say No to almost everything now. It's like a superpower.
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The trick is to define a couple of boxes within which you'll say "yes" and then figure out polite/canned ways to say "no" to everything else.
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The two hard cases are a) when there is money on offer and you have to say No to money b) it's a much younger person asking for time and are sincerely/endearingly convinced talking to me would be helpful (below a certain age, it almost never is)
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Don't make the box definitions public though.
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What taught me the skill was saying no repeatedly to people trying to get me to go to clubhouse
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When you're young, people routinely underestimate you, so it makes sense to default to Yes to everything. You can almost certainly do more than people expect. When you're old, the reverse is true. They overestimate you and you'll almost certainly disappoint outside your boxes.
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Some sort of halo effect that accompanies aging with minimum-viable visibility and a couple of misleading markers. Like being a hitchhiker who knows where his towel is.
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When you're young, you're kinda like a stem cell. You can reshape and adapt yourself to make a success of any open door/opportunity. You don't need to put yourself in a box because you have more potential than any pigeonhole.
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But past a point, every opportunity is either a thing you're already good at/for and know it, or will never be good at/for and know it. Constructing *new* things to be good at/for becomes a major project, not a casual thing you can pick up with that plasticky younger mind.
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