The True Cost of ‘Yes’

How to make better decisions in a world that’s constantly demanding your attention

We often underestimate the cost of a given decision and overestimate our capacity to execute and sustain it. That’s because we each have a unique relationship to our resources: time, energy, money, and attention. Our decisions are often shaped by our beliefs about what we have, what we lack, and what we think we can afford to give.

The challenge is that many of us don’t have a clear or honest inventory of our current resources. We move through life with inherited beliefs, a skewed understanding of our capacity, or an overinflated sense of urgency. Sometimes, we say yes because we’re excited, other times because we’re afraid to miss out or let someone down. But without regularly checking in on our resource capacity, we can risk overcommitting, underdelivering, or—worse—burning out.

Choosing means giving, gaining, and losing. There are no neutral decisions, each one catalyzes a series of effects that demand further assessment and response. Decisions don’t exist in silos. They have interdependencies and potential consequences. To decide is to change the course of one’s life, career, relationship, or business.

Before making a decision, a CEO needs to assess their runway, responsibilities, available human power, and strategic priorities while keeping the long-term vision in mind. Every decision is made within the context of those resources and constraints. That same principle applies to personal decisions, too. Take something as seemingly simple as a weekend trip. It’s not just the cost of the flight or hotel that one needs to consider—it’s the time to plan, the energy required to wrap up work commitments before leaving, the emotional labour of managing social dynamics, and the reintegration when you return. If you’re caregiving, navigating health challenges, or balancing multiple priorities, those ripple effects are amplified.

When we zoom out and consider the big picture impact of even seemingly small decisions, we begin to understand the cost of every yes and every no.

Everything has an energetic cost. Most things come with a time cost, and some things have a financial cost. But in our current paradigm, time is money, which means we need to treat it with the same discernment and intentionality we bring to our finances. Understanding the true cost isn’t just important for the person evaluating a choice or commitment, it’s also important when we’re making asks of others.

When we ask for someone’s time, we’re asking them to make a tradeoff. Whether in business or friendship, every commitment comes at the expense of something else. The more we understand and acknowledge that, the more likely we are to design invitations that honour people’s unique realities. Of course, not everything needs to be transactional. Generosity is a powerful currency. But clarity and care go hand in hand, especially when people are managing limited resources.

Recently, I’ve been more intentionally calculating resources and calendar blocking, which is the process of determining the true cost of every potential ‘yes’ and mapping out priorities and tasks in my calendar while leaving room for well-being and social obligations. I’m “budgeting” my time and quickly realizing that I’m overcommitted in some areas and undercommitted in others.

The cost is massive and reveals itself over time when things that are important keep getting pushed down the priority list because of things I’ve already committed to. Through this process I’m realizing that not only does decision making require clarity and foresight, but consistent reevaluation of one’s capacity based on internal and external shifts.

The more aware we become of the impact of saying yes, the more focused we can be with our efforts.

Presence, attention, and focused effort are non-negotiable when we’re building or creating anything—family, art, business, change. Every distraction, from an email to a shiny object disguised as a great opportunity, has the potential to pull us out of alignment. And alignment isn’t free—it costs time, energy, and often money to attain. When you’ve invested in being more attuned and mission-driven, you can’t afford to be derailed.

To continue being generous with my resources without depleting them is an ongoing challenge. One approach I’ve been experimenting with is designing systems that help me allocate what I have based on my actual responsibilities and priorities—not just my intentions, desires, or values.

This resource management system is a way of staying generous while still being boundaried. It forces clarity, reduces “resource leaks”, and helps ensure I’m not overextending in one area while neglecting another. When I use this system, I know exactly how much I can give—and what I need to protect and replenish in order to keep going.

Here’s what it currently includes:

• Clarity on goals. I need to know what I’m building toward—both personally and professionally. My north star keeps my choices anchored and aligned.
  

• An honest inventory of responsibilities. I look at everything I’m responsible for, from caregiving to creative output to running a business.
  

• A transparent view of my time and money. I evaluate both how much time I think I have and how much I actually do. I look at where my money’s going and how much discretionary energy and budget I can realistically allocate.
  

• A commitment to my well-being. I track what I need—emotionally, physically, spiritually—to function well and feel good. That’s a non-negotiable.
  

• Pre-defined space for generosity. I allocate time for volunteering and pro bono work, and budget a certain amount of money for causes or individuals I want to support. That way, when the ask comes in, I’m not deciding out of guilt or impulse.

When I’m invited into something or asked to say yes, I run it through this internal filter:

• What is being asked of me?

• Which bucket does it affect—my time, money, energy, or focus?

• Is this aligned with my current goals and priorities?

• What’s the true cost of saying yes?

• What’s the cost of saying no?

• How will this affect what I’ve already committed to?

Then I separate feelings from facts: I want to do this, but I can’t afford to right now. Or I’m hesitant, but it aligns, and I have the capacity.

Every decision we make sits somewhere on a spectrum of impact. When we say yes, we’re not just agreeing to a task—we’re making a trade. And that trade can land anywhere between:

• Generative <> Extractive

• Purposeful <> Distractive

• Empowering <> Diminishing

• Sustainable <> Depleting

• Strategic <> Reactive

These frameworks help us make better decisions that are conscious, contextual, and coherent with the futures we’re building toward. We’re likely already using these evaluation systems unconsciously, but they’re far more effective when we apply them deliberately because they force us to be thoughtful and considerate.

Decision-making becomes easier when we view our lives, work, and the world through the lens of capacity, equity, and care. Awareness changes our relationship to our resources—and other people’s resources—which are not only finite but sacred.

It’s not just external asks and opportunities that demand our attention—technology and social media play an interesting role in how we spend, leak, and lose time. These platforms profit from our voluntary but often unconscious behaviours, and they’re intentionally designed to keep us hooked. When we think about saying ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ we tend to imagine obvious demands, but we say yes every time we instinctively pick up our phones or get pulled into an internet rabbit hole. The average daily time spent on social media is 2.5 hours—that’s 38 days per year. Most of that time isn’t spent meaningfully connecting or creating, it’s spent consuming. Before smartphones, that energy was primarily dedicated to socializing (IRL), resting, creating, and being outside. I know, because I’m a millennial and remember what life was like before I had access to the world at my fingertips.

Distractions become a form of extraction when they pull us away from what matters most without meaning or conscious exchange, compromising our well-being, relationships, ability to generate income, focus, follow-through, agency, and creative capacity.

The inverse of this is what contributes to a set of “rules” for saying no to anything that:

• Undermines our physical and emotional well-being.

• Strains relationships in ways that are difficult to repair.

• Jeopardizes our ability to generate revenue—now or in the future.

• Pulls our attention away from what matters most.

• Disrupts the consistency, momentum, and execution we need to operate at our best.

• Limits our agency and interferes with our ability to make aligned decisions.

• Depletes our energy to the point where we can’t fully show up.

And why does all of this matter? What’s the point of protecting our time, energy, and focus? Because our ability to make an impact—on the people we love, the projects we pursue, the systems we want to change—is “funded” by our resources. It’s not about having more. It’s about being more intentional with what we already have.

When we protect our capacity, we’re not just preserving our own resources and well-being—we’re protecting our ability to contribute meaningfully to the world.

Different levels of protection, boundaries, and discernment are required depending on the life we’re designing or the impact we’re working toward. Our ambitions determine our bandwidth. If your mission is to learn how to love more deeply, then giving your time to people, holding space for feelings, and navigating interpersonal complexity might be exactly where your energy belongs. But your decisions might need to be filtered through a different lens if you’re trying to solve a systemic problem, transform an industry, or build a product that scales.

What we choose to spend our resources on and how we determine when to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are profoundly personal and constantly evolving. We can’t use someone else’s operating system. We have to develop our own.

All of this—the frameworks, the clarity, the discernment—isn’t about productivity. It’s about living in integrity with what matters to us. When we honour our resources, we’re more empowered to channel them into lives of meaning and momentum, which is how we can sustain our relationships and contributions over time.

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