[HN Gopher] The Focus to Say No (2011)
___________________________________________________________________
The Focus to Say No (2011)
Author : 7d7n
Score : 163 points
Date : 2021-02-01 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fs.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (fs.blog)
| oakfr wrote:
| Saying no is actually the fairly easy part. The hard part is
| understanding what to say yes to.
| croisillon wrote:
| The comments here reminds me that post where everybody was saying
| it was terrible writing and not sure if it even meant anything ;
| then later came an article "IA wrote an article and nobody at HN
| noticed" revealing the IA-writing was in fact heavily edited
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > We want to be the type of person that helps someone. But saying
| yes carries a cost. One that's often paid in the days, weeks, or
| even years in the future. What starts as a single meeting becomes
| a weekly one...
|
| There's a delicate balance here, because saying "no" often
| carries a cost too, it's just less visible than the cost of
| saying "yes." Saying "no" too often can mean missing
| opportunities for relationships, projects, promotions, vacations,
| etc. But since we never see those things, it's easy to think
| saying "no" was free.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| That's probably true, but I can tell you that in my previous
| two jobs, I said "no" a lot, and I basically managed to
| maneuver into a spot where my boss let me essentially work on
| what I wanted. I got raises and commendations. I was surprised,
| but it's like, to some extent, the more assertive and confident
| you are, the more they respect you.
|
| My personal experience has been that when it comes to getting
| promotions/raises, being liked by your coworkers (including
| your boss) is 10X more important than the amount of output you
| produce. You should try to be on friendly terms with your
| boss... And of course, if a friend asks you to do something,
| sometimes you say yes, sometimes you say "I would like to help,
| but I'm feeling saturated with the projects I already have
| going on right now, to be honest", and a good friend/manager
| understands that.
|
| An extra dimension to this is that you don't necessarily need
| to get promoted in your current job. In the software industry,
| it's easy to move from one job to another, and when you move
| laterally, you can often negotiate a better salary. Again,
| here, being liked by your coworkers is particularly important.
| If your coworkers like you, they will give you good referrals.
| If you can get a referral from your previous boss, that speaks
| volumes.
| throwaway713 wrote:
| > being liked by your coworkers (including your boss) is 10X
| more important than the amount of output you produce
|
| Is this really true? I can think of people I like very well
| as a person, but they are extremely unproductive and I would
| not want to have them on a project with me. On the flip side,
| there are people that I would not say I am friends with (not
| enemies either, just neutral interactions) who do an
| excellent job at getting work done and who I have given very
| positive peer feedback to.
|
| I always hope that things like promotions aren't popularity
| contests, but I never can tell for sure how much that's the
| case, particularly at higher levels of management...
| violetgarden wrote:
| Unfortunately, unless you have someone to vouch for you, it
| kind of can be a popularity contest. This is from a
| corporate point of view, where lower managers have to
| appeal up the chain to fight for promotions for their
| people. It's much easier for the higher ups to grant
| promotions to the people they've heard of.
| jimbokun wrote:
| "...but they are extremely unproductive and I would not
| want to have them on a project with me."
|
| So clearly you don't like them, _as a coworker_ , even
| though you like them as a friend.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yes, but context is important. Most people separate
| personal likes from office likes to at least some extent.
| Part of being liked in the office is being seen as
| productive enough. You can like someone personally and hate
| them on the job. You can hate someone personally and still
| like them on the job.
| belval wrote:
| 10X is a huge factor, I would say it's about half-half. One
| thing to keep in mind is that these things are not
| exclusive. Having a good relationship with your superior
| usually means more trust, better projects and much better
| communications which is key to actually getting what you
| need to fulfill your assignments.
|
| It works with both extremes. If your work output is awesome
| but you have a harder time with inter-personal relationship
| then of course in the greater picture you will be left out
| because people just won't come to you.
| yters wrote:
| In one job I was a tech lead, and said no to my boss a lot to
| maintain my team's focus. We ended up delivering, the boss
| was pleased, my teammates were happy, and I got a raise.
| hinkley wrote:
| You want the type of person who helps someone help themselves.
|
| Part of that, often overlooked, is doing a summary at the end
| explaining what were the concrete steps taken to get the result
| (if you have to poke around a bit to find the right spot, that
| can be disorienting). It's also giving people tools with guard
| rails built in so they can trust doing the task themselves.
|
| You don't want people who get off on owning a workflow, and are
| super-helpful but involved in perpetuity. There's a fine line
| between 'let Tom and Harry do it because they seem to enjoy it
| while I don't,' and 'everyone thinks Tom and Harry's solution
| is bullshit and I want nothing to do with it.' The latter leads
| to codependency, and these people are toxic to productivity,
| accidentally or intentionally.
| zentiggr wrote:
| Actually, i think it's likely that almost everyone at least
| unconsciously realizes the costs of no's, and that it's never
| really free. Hence the difficulty with actually saying no.
| gabea wrote:
| I agree with this sentiment. As with almost everything in life
| the answer is not to have too much of any one thing. Moderately
| saying yes and no will help you go further in my humble
| opinion. The discussion should focus on 1.) Understanding how
| much you say yes vs. no and 2.) If you say yes far too often or
| no far too often here are ways to bring you back to balance.
| mrexroad wrote:
| I think there's a more nuance here. Focus is saying no -- agreed.
| Giving help increases surface area for serendipity and
| opportunity -- agreed. I don't see these as being mutually
| exclusive.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Saying no is like saving your money in the bank, whereas saying
| yes is spending it.
|
| The bank pays lousy interest payments that usually don't keep up
| with inflation. Spending it on things that save you time in the
| future pays huge dividends. Most places don't invest in boosting
| productivity. I don't know if it's Cloud-think (horizontal
| scaling) or if I'm just imagining that it's gotten worse over the
| years.
| ohduran wrote:
| This please! Spend your time wisely. Just saying no (or yes,
| for all that matters) isn't a helpful heuristic.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Similarly Warren Buffet's '2-list strategy' drove this point home
| for me.
|
| [0] https://jamesclear.com/buffett-focus
| adkadskhj wrote:
| Question about FS: I took a look at the root site, and it appears
| FS advertises values i have been seeking to improve. Thought
| patterns, knowledge, etc. They have book content, and paid
| podcasts.
|
| With that said, can anyone comment on how good the content of FS
| is? Is their content worth buying? Is their content worth
| consuming?
|
| Opinions would be appreciated. So far i like what they advertise,
| so i'm curious how it holds up to scrutiny.
| willemlabu wrote:
| What this entire thought is missing is that you need to have a
| idea you're saying yes to.
|
| This is about prioritisation more than it's about focus.
| rawland wrote:
| No.
|
| To this article.
|
| If we all weren't taught the skill 'focus' in our early toddler
| years we wouldn't be able to read or write a single sentence
| here.
|
| No. To Jobs, the bullshitter.
|
| And after this little break and business administration fans
| bullshit, let's get back to understanding why the FFT is so
| practical when multiplying polynomials. Still don't get it
| 100%... still looks like magic to me... :)
| nayuki wrote:
| Were you watching this video by any chance?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7apO7q16V0 ("The Fast Fourier
| Transform (FFT): Most Ingenious Algorithm Ever?" by Reducible)
| tonymet wrote:
| There's a lot of nuance here. what to say No to? What are costs
| of saying No? How to say NO? e..g "No, never" vs "not right now".
|
| There are a lot of opportunities that don't reveal themselves in
| the moment. Say no to those and you'll miss a lot of upside.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| It's a tightrope.
|
| I used to work for a "NO" at almost any cost guy. He ended up
| shouting at me (and I shouted back) over a literal "this will
| take me exactly five minutes in SQL if I am being lazy about it"
| request that he said the requestor should have asked for two
| weeks ago, and they ought to have to wait. Now, at the end of his
| career, he works as an assistant (to someone who is almost an
| assistant themselves), where once he was the head of the
| department. He worked pretty hard for that reputation and it
| eventually caught up with him. Of course, it was still a ding on
| my review at the time but whatever.
|
| On the other hand, too much "yes" can keep you away from your
| actual duties, you end up greasing a lot of wheels instead of
| making formal fixes, and you can saddle yourself with a lot of
| obligations from what you _thought_ were one-off deals. You can
| be mired in place by a spider 's web of dotted-line
| relationships, and often yes to one person, right now, means that
| someone else's possible yes gets blocked and you get problems
| from there. And, frankly, you can end up doing work better suited
| for someone else. That road ends up in being taken advantage of.
|
| My only "solution," such as it is, is not to maintain _just_ a
| middle stance, but to slightly vacillate back and forth from it,
| as time and your mood allows. This can cause people to actually
| evaluate whether or not _you_ are the person who needs to do
| this. If you start gathering up all kinds of extra
| responsibilities, those need to be communicated, first verbally
| and then in writing, in numerous directions.
|
| Tightrope walkers do not stay _exactly_ in the middle, but move
| slightly back and forth to maintain balance, and that is what I
| advocate.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Not a lot of concrete advice here to be honest
|
| > While yes is easy to say, it's hard to live.
|
| Things like this just don't mean a whole lot. Maybe it's helpful
| to people that need to hear it though.
| ganafagol wrote:
| I find that this applies much broader than just work projects.
|
| Example: HN articles. I used to scroll through the front page,
| open every article with a remotely interesting sounding title in
| a new tab, usually another tab next to it with the HN discussion
| that I'd read after reading the article and where I'd keep
| reading quite a while after being done with the article. That's
| bad. Once I started prioritizing I'd have much more time for
| meaningful things. Saying no to reading comments about something
| I actually didn't care that much about. Saying no to actually
| finishing reading an article that I didn't really like that much.
| Saying no to even opening an article just because the title
| suggested it "could" be interesting but not really my cup of tea.
|
| A recent new strategy of mine is to first scroll through the list
| and then pick the article with the most promising title. Saying
| no to everything else. I may have missed really good stuff, but
| the payout is fantastic.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| When I was younger and sort of just starting out, I thought this
| way. My boss had given me a set of goals to work on, so I would
| focus on these goals to the exclusion of everything else. If
| somebody came and asked for help, I'd tell them I didn't have
| time to help, because I was busy focusing on the stuff that I was
| _supposed_ to be doing.
|
| What I found, the hard way, is that all of those people I refused
| to help badmouthed me behind my back, and I got a reputation for
| being unhelpful (which was fair, because I was!). Come review
| time, all of this negative feedback was a big topic of
| conversation.
|
| Finally I got the hint and did a complete 180 - if somebody asked
| for my help, at any time, I dropped everything and focused on
| helping them. I fell behind on what I was "supposed" to be doing,
| but I also kept close track of where the interruptions were
| coming from, just in case.
|
| Now, come review time, my boss didn't even seem to care that I
| never met any of my goals, and talked on and on about what a
| great reputation I had. One boss after another, consistently,
| every time.
| js8 wrote:
| I love solving problems for other people! If you know how to
| help, they are really happy, which will make you happy too. And
| if you don't know how to help, it's somebody else's problem!
| cratermoon wrote:
| There's a Middle Way.
|
| - drop what you are doing and focus on the person. In a face-
| to-face situation, body language matters.
|
| - figure out if it's something you can do quickly. Because
| you've already lost your focus on whatever you were doing, it's
| efficient to just go ahead and knock out small tasks.
|
| - if you can't do it quickly, either because it's a lot of work
| or it takes time to explain what the problem is, you must
| negotiate and schedule the task for later, or have a meeting.
| Interpersonal skills are important: be sure the person goes
| away feeling like you care as much about their problem as they
| do.
|
| - follow up with your scheduling.
|
| Yes, frequent interruptions are bad for focus. Part of becoming
| the sort of person people feel comfortable going to is to help
| people know when it's OK to interrupt you and when they should
| wait for another time, or communicate in a way that is less
| disruptive. There will always be that sort of person who
| doesn't "get" it, and will interrupt you when they want to.
| js8 wrote:
| I would say help as advisor, but let the asking party do the
| "legwork", i.e. all the obvious stuff.
| bluGill wrote:
| Just be careful not to be the guy who isn't helpful because
| of all the work you have to do before you can prove you are
| worthy to ask a question.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Work is hell. And hell is other people. Work is people. People
| are hell.
| amelius wrote:
| You can always work for Amazon Mechanical Turk.
| darioush wrote:
| :) Wanted to say this comment made me smile. You are not
| alone. Sending you good vibes
| omoikane wrote:
| It sounds like the boss should have publicized a primary goal
| of helping others and prioritized that over whatever you were
| assigned to do, if that matches the primary metric of those
| reviews.
|
| Alternatively, the goals should be set with the understanding
| that some portion of your time will be allocated to helping
| others.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is very rare for a company to not pivot in some way over the
| course of the year. Those interruptions as often as not are not
| only taking you away from your tasks, they are also your notice
| that your tasks need to change.
|
| Note that I used the word "tasks" not "goals"! They are NOT the
| same and I suspect you have mixed them up. Tasks are what you
| do to meet your goals, and can be interrupted. Goals are where
| you want to be, not the tasks you do to accomplish them. Goals
| can be accomplished in many different ways, and often take
| years.
|
| I have a goal to help people out. I have another goal to see if
| we can port some of our software to a cheaper/slower CPU. The
| second goal might or might not be worth doing this year - CPU
| prices are coming down (as always), and there is a cost to
| inventory of the slower parts so I need to always keep my ear
| open to the possibility I should give up on the second goal
| because it no longer makes sense. However helping out other
| people in my company is generally good, so it is the more
| important goal in general even if the cheaper CPU might - if it
| works out - be what it takes to stay ahead of competition.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I feel like there is a middle ground. At a previous job, a
| common compliment during my quarterly review was that people
| thought I was very helpful and a joy to have around the office.
|
| I am the type of person who is helpful to a fault though, and I
| sometimes end up neglecting myself and my responsibilities in
| order to help others and make sure they are happy. Later on in
| that job this tendency to always help others lead to burnout as
| I tried taking on too many responsibilities at once and spread
| myself too thin.
|
| Nowadays I still try to be as helpful as possible, but I make
| sure to not spread myself too thin and take into account my own
| responsibilities and mental health when deciding to help
| someone. Even then the answer wont always be a solid no, but
| sometimes just asking if the issue can wait until I'm at a
| point in my current work where I can stop and help out.
| sjg007 wrote:
| This is why we end up working on our assigned "tasks" outside
| of work hours. It's one reason I like work from home, less work
| place distraction.
| nzmsv wrote:
| Beware the opposite trap: once you get a reputation for being a
| team player willing to do work that nobody else will, people
| will appreciate you but also throw more of this kind of work
| your way. After a few years you may wonder why you are not
| being promoted and find out that your reputation is now of
| someone who cannot handle a large project. Fighting my way out
| of this particular pit right now and learning how to say no a
| lot more often.
| darkerside wrote:
| The killer concept here is to ask. Just ask your boss, people
| are requesting help on X, should I help them, or stay focused
| on your goal? People get so mad that their bosses can't read
| their minds and tell them the answers to questions they were
| never asked.
| SimonPStevens wrote:
| The real trick is balancing the two.
|
| Help enough to build that reputation for being a team player.
| When you can't fully help, don't just say no, give them some
| starting pointers and offer to review, or assist more if they
| get stuck, so even then you are still being supportive.
|
| Help people to help themselves. Don't just do something for
| them, guide them in how to do it themselves so next time they
| don't even have to disturb you.
|
| Listen out for opportunities to use your skills to help people
| when they don't even realise they need help. I've lost count of
| the number off little scripts, tools or reports that I've
| knocked out in a couple of hours just because someone absent
| mindly moaned about something they found annoying. These things
| build your reputation far more than just plain helping, and if
| you're observant they are often simple and quick to do.
|
| But also, make time to progress your big goals too, which does
| mean you have to say no sometimes.
|
| Get help in return from those you have helped to move your
| goals forward faster than you can on your own.
| npsimons wrote:
| > The real trick is balancing the two.
|
| The way I've found to do this is just do stuff, then have
| people think it's awesome, then teach them about it. At least
| that's been my experience, but then I've been a computer nerd
| so long it's basically become my path to a niche sort of
| mastery.
| kodah wrote:
| Generally when I engage with people I'm looking for
| opportunities to teach them in a way that they won't need me
| anymore. More simply, I treat "help" like issue triage.
|
| a. If the help is production impacting or blocking an issue
| that is due soon then they'll get more direct feedback but
| I'll continue on with (b) as well.
|
| b. Send the person in the direction of resources that aid
| self-learning.
|
| Habitual help seekers
|
| Some people are habitual in their search for help. I don't
| run into this as much as I used to, but when I figure out
| that someone is placing me much higher up on the help tier
| than my time allows me to be I will generally start
| continually referring them to (b). If things are bad enough
| then I'll generally talk to their mentor about refining their
| learning process. I usually find this where folks haven't
| "learned how to learn" yet; although software engineers do
| have a good reputation for learning things outside their
| domains, there's no shortage of folks who _just_ know how to
| string code together.
| bluGill wrote:
| If the question should be in a document, then I respond by
| opening the documentation and checking to be sure the
| documentation is right, and then fixing it as needed. That
| done I tell them to read the documentation and let me know
| if anything is hard to understand so I can fix it.
|
| When writing it is very easy to skip steps that are
| obvious. So when "asks too many questions about the
| obvious" can figure it out from the documentation I know
| the documentation is finally good enough for everybody -
| including the person who doesn't ask enough questions.
| kodah wrote:
| That's an interesting approach. Generally speaking, my
| organization doesn't maintain large document repositories
| because they go stale quickly and our products are too
| vast to document in such a way.
|
| For some context on my reply:
|
| - We maintain one design document per project. This
| document references everything from the application
| specifications to the automation that puts it in
| production.
|
| - Most documentation is written in line with code.
| Finding documentation is about as complicated as finding
| the right repository.
|
| This is also why peer review (in our org) isn't limited
| by level. Ideally we'd get feedback across the experience
| spectrum to make sure not only code but comments make
| sense to everyone.
| bitwise-and wrote:
| This comment resonates with me as I'm currently the one
| habitually asking for help! Coming to the realization and
| accepting the issue has been tough but I'm actively working
| on it these days.
| yters wrote:
| I have a co-worker who does this, and everyone likes him,
| especially the boss, since he will jump on anything and get it
| done. He also seems to work really long hours and weekends,
| even though he has a family. He also does not seem to want to
| negotiate for a raise. I've chosen to not be likey coworker and
| so far I've been promoted, gotten 10 and 15 percent raises,
| etc. I do tend to rub coworkers and leadership the wrong way
| sometimes, but that's a trade-off I am fine with. I would
| rather be happy with my work hours and well paid than well
| liked.
| scsilver wrote:
| Just say no to friends, family, and all the human things that
| make life worth living.
| myth2018 wrote:
| Indeed. Things that make life worth living and, when they lack
| for too long, you start to ask, after all, what is the point of
| all that hard work.
| dustingetz wrote:
| Bad incentive structures prevent this ... root cause is in many
| scaled up systems of people, optics (appearances and visibility)
| are what you are judged by, as there is zero accountability or
| metrics in place other than how you make the decision makers feel
| about you, so focusing and delivering results is actually not
| what is rewarded! Basically all human systems at scale have this
| problem, consider politics. And you don't even get a seat at the
| table if you opt-out of the game. You either have to play or you
| can create your own bubble universe, like a startup, and do
| everything yourself, unless of course you want investors ...
| tomlue wrote:
| diversification is valuable in your portfolio, but also in your
| day to day activities. Being overly focused is a failure to
| diversify.
| rwmj wrote:
| Is this sort of pabulum really interesting to HN readers?
| hestefisk wrote:
| Agree. Looks like some pseudo philosophical motivational babble
| from my LinkedIn feed.
| dang wrote:
| Traditionally the space of self-help/entrepreneurial/managerial
| advice posts has been of interest, but the bar needs to be high
| because only the top-quality slice is really worth spending
| time on. That's true of technical posts too, but even more true
| of this stuff.
|
| Often the discussions end up being more interesting than the
| articles, as HN readers share their related experiences. In
| such cases we'll often leave the thread up even when the
| article itself is fluff.
|
| The main problem with the current article is that it doesn't
| include enough detail. If there were a few interesting examples
| or case studies, that would go a long way. Saying no based on
| staying focused is an interesting topic and an important and
| difficult skill, the kind of thing it's easy to think you're
| doing when you're really not.
| toomim wrote:
| I was just thinking about this concept last night on my own, so
| yes, it is interesting.
|
| It's short, but short is good, and an example of the author
| saying "no" to a additional thoughts.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Your comment is one of the reasons I read the comments before
| the articles, so yes.
| fgimenez wrote:
| My experience has been to say "yes" to everything in early career
| when you are not in demand. Then slowly transition to saying "no"
| as your career develops. The transition point from "yes" to "no"
| is when you develop more unique and valuable skill sets.
|
| When all you have to offer is energy, excitement, and smarts -
| "yes" opens doors, creates relationships, and gives you
| opportunities to learn. That's how you grow, not only in career,
| but in relationships.
|
| After you can bring more differentiated value to an opportunity,
| you're going to be in more demand and need to filter the best use
| of your time and energy.
|
| The Steve Job's part is absolutely correct when you are sitting
| in Steve Jobs' position. As a thought experiment, probably every
| Fortune 500 CEO would want to have a 1-2 hr meeting with Jobs
| circa 2008. That would be 500-1000 hours of meetings where
| arguably _they_ would derive more value than he would. So while
| it would be insane for most to pass up on these meetings, he
| obviously would need to.
|
| Don't confuse the "yes" vs "no" periods of your life.
| jaggirs wrote:
| I say learn to say yes first, then learn to say no. Saying no to
| everything because you think you can't do something is going to
| result in an extremely boring life. Find your limits first, you
| probably are capable of doing more than you think.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| As everything else in life it's a matter of balance and how you
| get your message across. You don't want to be the ass who never
| helps people if it's not his direct task. But then you also don't
| want to a pushover who lets himself constantly being distracted.
| I have done both.
|
| I think most important is to be clear and compassionate when you
| say "No".
| u678u wrote:
| I really regret helping people and taking on external work. For
| me it comes down to interviews for your next job (which
| realistically is the best chance for promotion).
|
| When they're asking you coding quizzes and examples of being
| productive, all the times you helped out doing annoying
| paperwork, support calls and bug hunts count for nothing. They
| can be useful for some stories but not much.
| hinkley wrote:
| Here is my secret to success. Projects are only successful when
| somebody knows how everything works together.
|
| The person you feel comfortable approaching with a problem
| knows about problems nobody else knows about. If the problem
| turns out to be severe, they have more time to come up with a
| reasonable fix. They look smarter in the emergency meeting. If
| the problem is malingering, like architecture problems, they're
| constantly inoculated with details about broad parts of the
| system they might not otherwise be looking at.
|
| If you are being helpful, your goal should be to get promoted
| into a mentoring or a leadership position. That gets you
| something concrete to put on your resume for the next place.
| Nobody knows how big your story points are so feature count
| tells them nothing at all.
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