A few weeks ago, I said “no” to an amazing opportunity to help writers. This was an opportunity to partner with an entrepreneur I greatly respect, a person who has been very influential in my life. He was one of the first people to help me see that I could make a living with writing, and I’ve read his books and listened to his podcasts for years.

This opportunity would have let me help more people, expand my influence, and spend more time with people I highly respect. So why did I say no?

The answer is simple: I didn’t have the bandwidth to do a good job in this role.

I’m working on several ghostwriting projects, leading my Daily Writer Community, creating this podcast, and working on a couple of my own books. This is also my son’s senior year of high school. I’m definitely in time preservation mode since he will be out of the house and living on his own life before I know it.

Remember, anytime you say “yes” to one thing, you are saying “no” to a hundred other things.

Time is not infinite. You only have so much of it. So make sure you are saying “yes” to the right things for your season of life. Sometimes you will have to pass up amazing opportunities because the timing isn’t right. But you have to respect your existing commitments and realistically assess whether you can add something else to your plate.

In the case of the opportunity I mentioned above, it was important that I be able to do a good job if I committed to it. But the reality was that it would be something I was squeezing into my schedule, just trying to do the bare minimum instead of really giving it a good effort.

I have too much respect for the person who was offering me the opportunity, and too much respect for writers, to give something a half-hearted effort.

I hope you feel the same way. When you say “yes” to something, make sure you can do it well. Commit to a few things and put your full effort into them.

Then say “no” to everything else.

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As writers, we have lots of project-based items to think about. These are big items that can take weeks or months to complete. This can include things like building a website, writing a book, creating a course, building an author platform, or starting a podcast. That is why it’s easy to get paralyzed by all the things you think you should be doing.

The small steps are important, too. In fact, the big steps are made up of the small steps. The big steps don’t consist of anything but the small steps. Small steps are the only things that get you to your goals.

Thomas Carlyle, a British historian, said, “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

What do you need to do today? Not next week or next month, but today? What lies clearly at hand? Focus on that thing until it’s done. Don’t spend so much time thinking about the big projects that the small steps don’t get done. Focusing on today’s work and making sure it gets done is the only way to take the big steps.

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