The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 227 - Hell No?

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: So, you know that concept of "Hell yeah, or no"?

Jen: Yes, I do. I practice that concept.

Pete: Right, I had a feeling you did. I have been thinking about it recently, and I wonder if sometimes the opposite is actually a better approach.

Jen: Oooh. Okay. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So listeners, I said to Jen...full disclosure, I said to Jen before we started recording this, "I have this idea and I'm not even sure if I believe it yet, but let's talk it out."

Jen: Yes, let's. What do you mean by opposite?

Pete: Okay. So I guess, well, first and foremost, my understanding of the, "Hell yeah, or no," rule. I first heard about it from Derek Sivers. I think he was one of the original writers of this concept. And I've actually heard him talk a lot about how he thinks it's actually misunderstood by a lot of people. And that when he wrote about it or spoke about it, what he intended to mean was, at a certain point in your career, at a certain point in your life where the amount of inbound is overwhelming to the point where you have a lot of choice in what you can do, one way to start thinking about how to decide what to do is to incorporate this rule of, "Hell yeah, or no," i.e. unless something is an absolute full-body, "Hell yes," don't do it. Say no. And I've heard a few people talk about this rule recently, and my thought, honestly, has been, "I don't think that rule applies to you at this point in your business or life or career or time."

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And I started reflecting on my own journey of starting a business, for example. And I actually think that sometimes taking the opposite approach, like, "Hell no, or yeah," might serve us more.

Jen: Yes. Okay, I get what you're throwing now.

Pete: Are you catching it?

Jen: I totally caught it.

Pete: So I guess like, "Hell no," meaning, unless it's an absolute full-body no, absolutely this is completely out of alignment or unethical or something I would never ever, ever, in a million years do, it might be worth looking at. Maybe it's worth saying, "Yeah. There's some possibility here that I haven't quite thought about or tapped into or that I can't see yet." And that saying yes to certain things (and we can get into what that might look like and when it might be appropriate) could actually open doors that you cannot see right now or that look closed to you right now. And I think that maybe I'm convincing myself that this is perhaps a good idea at times.

Jen: I have not even been on this call with you for four minutes and you've just convinced me, you've changed my mind. I'm thinking differently about the, "Hell yes," and what I call the (sorry, mom) the, "Fuck no."

Pete: Right. I had a feeling there was a New York version, which was like a, "Fuck yeah."

Jen: Okay, so here's why I am so enthusiastically changing my mind about this, Pete. Possibility is something that I say often is my religion. Possibility is my religion. And yet, the practice of, "If it's not a hell yes, it's a no," doesn't allow for possibilities. So, I'm extremely enthusiastic about that. And it seems to me that to do this in either direction, one must understand what would make something a yes or no and have had at least some degree of conversation with one's self ahead of time, to know, "What is the bottom line? What do you care about? What are the things that are important? What are your current priorities? What are your goals, etc.?"

Pete: Mmm-hmm. Yeah, some self-awareness to know where you're at and what you are valuing at this point in time.

Jen: Indeed.

Pete: So, I mean, I have so many examples of how this rule that we've decided we're now onboard with has played out. Like, when I was starting my business (and honestly, even sometimes still), I will have the opportunity to or have had the opportunity to hop on a call with a senior executive at a big global company, and the only window of time they can do is some ungodly hour for me because I'm based in Australia, maybe it's 3 AM or maybe it's 4 AM. Now, that's not a, "Hell yeah."

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Like, I don't jump up on my chair and go, "Yes. I want to interrupt my sleep at 3 AM, do a call, and then get back into bed and try and go back to sleep." That's not a, "Hell yeah." However, it's also not a, "Hell no." And so if we think about, instead of, "Hell yeah, or no,"...because if, "Hell yeah, or no," was the rule, I would say no to that, I guess, in that framework. But if, "Hell no, or yeah," was the rule, I'm like, "Oh, that's not a, 'Hell no.' But yeah, like there's some possibility there that could eventuate. There's some things that might happen if I show up, get up early, you know, have myself a coffee and show up on this call." And that's literally exactly what happened. Like, those calls have led to so many projects, conversations, friends that I could never have anticipated. Honestly, that like posture led me to meeting you. Like, to coach a US timezone of a leadership development workshop from Australia is not a super convenient thing to do from a body-clock perspective.

Jen: Wow. Yeah. It's making me think about the urgency of the payoff. That, you're very good at being able to see how something could lead to something else. I mean, it's literally your superpower, "See things other people can't see."

Pete: Oh, interesting. Huh.

Jen: So I wonder how that helps you in those situations, and maybe the rest of us need to try to practice that a little bit.

Pete: Yeah. And it's so funny because as you were saying that, I was thinking of the inverse of the superpower, which is when, perhaps sometimes, I am too liberal in my imagination of how much possibility could be had. And I get on a call like that or I end up in a situation, and I'm like, "Nope, definitely no possibility here. I probably should have said no to this. Like, I've over-committed to things that didn't necessarily get me anywhere." So, you know, it swings in roundabouts.

Jen: Yeah, but...okay. Well, the thing is, you don't know until after the call, whether or not doing it was a good decision or a bad decision.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Leaning back on our old pal, Annie Duke's concepts about how to make good decisions. I mean, even if nothing had panned out from that, it was the right decision to say yes, for the possibility of it all.

Pete: I agree. Yeah. And so then, there's this idea that I've been thinking a lot about...I can't actually remember where I heard someone say this. You know when you're listening to like an epic two-hour podcast and they say something that is like such a throwaway comment that you really latch on to? So, I don't even remember where this came from. But it was that, "Action creates information."

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: And that was sort of this like mental model to help people take action, say yes. And that, no matter what happens from you saying yes, you will get a bunch of information that will enable you to then make a better decision moving forward, or to take another step in the different direction or the same direction or whatever. That, you know, constantly saying no because it's not a, "Hell yeah," is not necessarily conducive to creating a bunch of information. It's more conducive to sitting back and waiting for the right opportunity. Which honestly, I don't know, maybe I'm skeptical, but I just feel like more of us are in the position of not having a sudden influx of all these opportunities. We're not all Derek Sivers, right?

Jen: Right.

Pete: We don't all have bestselling books where we've got inbound coming out our ears. So I just think sometimes that, again, I just feel like that concept gets misused and over-exaggerated in terms of how ruthless we should be with the things we say yes to and no to.

Jen: It's also such binary thinking.

Pete: Right. Yeah.

Jen: I mean, it's just, there's no room for the middle. This is reminding me, I do this thing, and to try to make it fun instead of like getting a groan out of people, I call it a game...so, I call it The Broadway Game. So, I'll have a client come to me to talk strategy. And I need to understand, before I can help them strategize, exactly where they want to be headed. So I pull up all the Broadway listings, and we play The Broadway Game. So I say the name of a show, and you say one of the following three answers (and nothing but one of the following three answers), "Yes," "No," or, "I don't know." So, "Maybe," is off the table. It's "Yes," "No," or, "I don't know." And at the end of playing The Broadway Game, the, "Yes," has become things we start to build strategy around, the "No's," are things we commit to putting zero resources/energy/time/effort/money toward, and, "I don't know," those are things that we're going to pursue information about. So, it's just interesting to hear you say, "Action creates information." I'm realizing that that's exactly what we're trying to do when we play The Broadway Game.

Pete: Yeah. I love that that third option removes it from the binary, like you said. Like, I joked about this being the inverse of, "Hell yeah, or no," you know, "Hell no, or yeah." But I think the truth is probably somewhere in between. Like, sometimes there's a, "Hell yeah, or no," opportunity. Sometimes there's a, "Hell no, or yeah," opportunity. Most of the time, I imagine we're swimming somewhere in between, which is, "I don't know. How might I find out," or, "Yeah, that sounds great. It could lead to something, it could not," or "No, absolutely not. I don't think I have the time to do that." So I feel like you're taking it out of the binary, which perhaps is where I've felt tension, when I hear people like...I think this has come up a few times in the last few weeks for me, where people are like, "This year is the year of, 'Hell yeah, or no' for me," and I'm like, "Ah, I'd be careful. I'd be careful." Like, I just, when I hear people say that, I'm like, "I don't know if it's the universal rule that you think it is, and I don't think that's what Derek intended."

Jen: Mmm-hmm. I'm laughing because I'm currently teaching my Shift class, my mindset workshop. And someone in that class has inspired the motto among the group as, "Fuck it, '23."

Pete: Tell me more.

Jen: Well, it's like, "I'm going to stop getting in my own way. I'm going to commit to taking risks. I'm going to try new things. I'm going to let go of things that are weighing me down. It's like, just fuck it, '23."

Pete: I like that. To me, that removes the "Hell" from the, "Hell yeah." You know? It's like, it's just, "Yeah." Like, unless it's an, "Absolutely no," "Fuck it. Yeah, I'll have a crack. I'll give it a go. Why not? I'll try it. I'll find something to learn from this opportunity and we'll see where it might land."

Jen: I'm digging this a lot, Pete. I'm truly digging it. And I'm looking at...I'm in the process of re-formatting my to-do list and clearing it out and making new spaces on my calendar for things and getting rid of some things, and I'm just wondering, if this is a tool, I probably need to apply a little more liberally.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. I keep thinking of examples. Like, we have 220+ episodes of this podcast. When I listen back to them before we release them, they're not all, "Hell yeah, that's our greatest episode." In fact, I could count on one hand, the amount of times I've thought that.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: They're often like, "Oh, yeah, that's solid. That's solid. I think people might like that."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And if it's a, "Hell no," we go, "No, let's not release that." So, we actually apply that kind of, "Hell no, or yeah," rule to our podcast.

Jen: You're so right. You're so right.

Pete: So, okay, the podcast example...can you think of other examples where thinking about the inverse might be a helpful tool? Like for me, like I mentioned, you know, the call in the middle of night. For me, if someone's starting a business or just starting out in their career, you probably should say yes a lot more than you say no. Because you don't necessarily know, at that point, the kinds of clients that are going to really fill you up. You don't necessarily know how those ideas that you have for your business are going to be received until you say yes to a bunch of people, have a bunch of conversations, and start to generate like feedback from them. So, they're like a couple of examples I can think of.

Jen: Well, in my world, I actually see this as really useful with people who are extraordinarily "successful". You know, a common complaint among people in the artistic space, when they've had a certain level of success, is that it's hard to break out of the kind of work you've done, because the kind of work you've done has been successful. So if you are someone whose career has been built by playing the same character on a sitcom, let's say, for many, many, many years, it's really hard to think about trying a different genre, trying a different kind of character, doing something that feels risky. So I can see that the, "Hell yes," can really be a hiding place. And that, at whatever place in your career you are, that relying on, "Hell yes," can help you to steer clear of risk taking. And I don't know, I'm just, my brain is kind of melting on this episode because I'm like, "Oh my gosh, how many people have I ill-advised around that, 'Hell yes,' feeling? And how can I now literally call everyone in my rolodex and be like, 'Kidding.'"

Pete: "Kidding. JK."

Jen: "'Kidding.'" We have to think again, in the words of Adam Grant, and come out of hiding around needing it to feel, ahead of the experience, needing for it to be a, "Hell yes."

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, prior to knowing what might happen.

Jen: Right.

Pete: It's a lot of expectation to put on a particular thing, yeah. It's funny, you were sharing that example of actors...it reminded me of, in Matthew McConaughey's great book called Greenlights (I'll pop it in the Box O' Goodies) he talks about the exact thing that you just described. Which was when...I'm sure I'm going to butcher part of this, but my recollection is that he was kind of flagged as the rom-com guy pretty early on in his career. And he deliberately and intentionally said like, "Hell no," to everything because he didn't want to be pigeonholed as the rom-com guy. And that was uncomfortable. He didn't know what would happen. There was no guaranteed version of what might come out the other side of that. And eventually, it led to him taking on some roles that were not in rom-com, that were like more drama roles or more like suspense roles or more like serious roles. And yeah, there's just a really good chapter or like a couple of chapters in that book about this exact idea.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: Also, I just love Matthew McConaughey. He's so good.

Jen: I recently, on a plane, rewatched one of the John Grisham movies with Matthew McConaughey. I was like, "Damn. This is really fun. It's very suspenseful and exciting."

Pete: Was it The Lincoln Lawyer?

Jen: Maybe?

Pete: It's so good.

Jen: When I come up with what it is, I'll pop it in the Box O' Goodies. Well, Pete, here's what I've got to say to you about this episode: Hell yes.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.