Work-Life Innovation |

“Hey Steve, want to go for a drink?” “Uh, no thanks. I’m tired and I have some work to do anyway. Sorry!”

“Hey, we are having a get together next week, you should come!” “Oh, sorry, I can’t, I’m er, …busy that day.” “But I haven’t told you which day its happening!”  “Well, I mean I’m busy all week, I don’t think I could make it, I’m really sorry”

“Steve, we are going to London on Saturday for a day out. You should come”
“Ahh, I think there’s something I have to do Saturday, I just can’t remember what it is right now. Can I let you know later in the week? Cheers”

Ever found yourself saying any of the above? Of course you have, everyone gets invited to things they don’t want to or can’t attend for one reason or another. What’s more troubling however are those times when you find yourself taking a rain check when you have no real good reason to.

A few months ago

I realised that I was tending to say ‘No’ a lot. I hadn’t realised just how much until I decided to try saying ‘Yes’ a bit more often. ‘Yes’ to invites out, ‘Yes’ to suggestions, ‘Yes’ to requests and so on. What happened was that I found myself saying ‘No’ and became very aware of the fact. The interesting thing was, I often said ‘No’ without really having a good reason for it. It was almost a knee jerk reaction. I guess I was just developing a habit of opting out. It just seemed more comfortable to stay in. It was easier to just go home and watch TV or read a book. It was a nice, easy and safe little routine. Besides, work was always busy and after a full day’s work, all I wanted to do was go home, shut the door and decompress.

The only thing was, it sucked! Don’t get me wrong though, going home and decompressing by vegging out on the sofa, or having a bath and an early night doesn’t suck - often it’s just necessary - but having it as your default does suck. After living like this for way too long I had slowly become stale and bored. I needed to change my routine, but I didn’t know how. My life seemed to be just about work and home - often involving more work. This two dimensional life became the norm - no wonder I felt bored! I was bored because I always knew what I would be doing, I knew exactly where I’d be (at work or at home), what I’d be doing and when I’d be doing it. Even though I was bored, life became a snug little routine and anything that promised to drag me out of that easy comfort zone I would automatically, but politely, decline.

So, what did I do about it?

Well, as often can happen when you’re looking for a change, one falls right into your lap. I came across a book called ‘Yes Man’ by Danny Wallace. In the book Danny recounts 6 months of his life where he indiscriminately responded with a “Yes” to any and every request, suggestion, and invite that came his way. It’s a good book, often hilarious and, more importantly, it spoke directly to where I was in my life at that time. Now, ‘Yes Man’ is primarily a funny book, and I suspect some of it has been embellished for comedic effect (in one section, Danny tells of how he travels to Amsterdam to collect the $20 million he had been offered in a random email he’d received from the son of a Sultan of Brunei! - needless to say it was a scam). So I suspect the zealous manner in which he pursued his Yes’s were exaggerated to a certain degree. But I liked the idea and thought about what it means to say yes more. I developed the idea of the “Yescapade“, a mini adventure that you wouldn’t normally agree to but that can be set going with a simple “Yes!”.

But before I give you some examples of what Yescapades I’ve recently signed up for, I want to dig a bit deeper into what saying Yes means.

Life is a mixture of predictability and randomness.

Too much predictability and we become bored, too much randomness and we get stressed. Getting the mix right therefore is important. I had strayed into a life that had way too much predictability and not enough surprise and, as a consequence I was pretty damned bored. Surprises can be good for us. They can shake us out of our preconceptions and show us a new perspective on things. Saying ‘Yes’ can re-introduce some randomness into your life and give you some nice surprises. Saying yes doesn’t always have to be in response to other people’s suggestions, you can say ‘Yes!’ to an idea you’ve had. Saying Yes has over the last few months done a great deal to get me out of the rut I was in. I have met loads of new people, generate lots of new stories and memories for me to tell (bore?) people with and has generally improved the quality of my life. It has also, I think, made me a better person for it. Strange isn’t it how three little letters can have such an impact?

Here then are some Yescapades I’ve recently committed to (and some I agreed to in the past when I didn’t even know about Yescapdes)

1. Saying Yes on Tuesday to a trip to Paris on Friday simply to drink a bottle champagne under the Eiffel Tower - Awesome fun!
2. Saying Yes to Salsa Classes despite somehow having more than two left feet - work in progress but already have met a bunch of interesting new people.
3. Saying Yes to Spending Christmas and New Year in Los Angeles despite the fact that there won’t be anyone there I know! - I’ll let you know how I get on.
4. Saying Yes to being the toast master at a Norwegian wedding in Norway even though I don’t speak a word of Norwegian - Amazingly it went down a storm!
5. Saying Yes to rowing 26 miles down the river Thames in the Great River Race after doing no training whatsoever - despite bumping into the bank about 5 times, we didn’t come last!
6. Saying Yes to a weekend in Moscow with a friend I haven’t seen in 2 years - scheduled for early next year.
7. Saying yes to a project to help get a friend of mine a job at NASA - How random! But we will definitely give it our best shot.
8. Saying yes to training to run a mile in 6 minutes - gone from 10 minutes a mile to 7 1/2 minutes in two months.
9. Saying yes to losing 2 stone - done in 1 and a half months.
10. Saying yes to learning Spanish - Not sure why I did this, seemed like a good idea at the time…

Feel free to post any Yescapades you’ve had in the comments section below. i’d love to hear about them!

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