You know the feeling. You said yes to something, and now it’s time to do it. But instead of feeling excited, you feel dread. This actually has a name: it’s called the “Yes-Damn Effect” and it’s the subject of lots of memes, usually titled “When you agreed to go out and the time to go out is getting closer.”
The Yes-Damn Effect is usually caused by dynamic inconsistency: the “you” that needs to do the thing is not the same as the “you” that agreed to do the thing.
You probably know this well: it’s what happens when you go to the supermarket when you’re hungry and buy a bunch of junk food, and then when you’re home and not hungry, you regret it.
As every software developer knows, we tend to overestimate how much time our future selves will have, and underestimate how long the things we currently have on our plates will take, and how many random things will pop up between now and then.
So even if we were able to estimate correctly the benefit of the thing we agreed to do, we tend to underestimate the cost.
Damn, indeed.
It can be even worse: sometimes we overestimate the benefits, too. But let’s not even dwell on that, because there’s a cool technique that I want to tell you about. It’s called the “No-Yay Effect.”
As you become more experienced, you learn that you need to say “no” sometimes. You can’t do everything, and you can’t do everything well. But saying “no” is hard. You immediately see the disappointment of the person you’re saying “no” to, but you may not see the benefit to you.
So here’s a cool trick.
When you say “no” to something, put an empty reminder on your calendar for the time when you would have done the thing. A very simple way is to put a 30-minute meeting with yourself on the day that the request was due. I usually mark that time as “free”, so it doesn’t actually block my calendar, but I make sure to turn on the reminder.
This will start to give you some positive reinforcement for saying “no” as you’ll start to see the benefit of the time you’ve saved. It’s not uncommon that one such reminder will pop up in my calendar when I’m really busy and then I think “Yay, I’m glad I said no to that thing.”
Yay, indeed.
Over time, this positive reinforcement may make it easier for you to say “no” to things. And you may be happier for it.