When you say “yes” to something, it leads to action and the weight of the decision is lifted. The same outcome happens when you say “no”, just for a different reason. The maybe is the only one that stays with you, and carries weight.
Think about how a decision actually clears your head. When you say yes, you act on it, it gets handled, and it’s off your plate. When you say no, it’s off your plate as well. Either way you’re free of it.
The maybe never goes anywhere. Not right now. Let me think about it. I’ll circle back. It sounds harmless, even responsible. But it sits there, open, running quietly in the background.
A maybe isn’t a decision you postponed. It’s a decision you’re paying interest on.
And you pay in attention. One open maybe is nothing. But they stack. Ten of them don’t feel like ten small things on a list, they feel like a low hum you can’t point to. You end the day tired and you can’t say why. That’s the weight, and it was never the task. It was the fact that the task was still open.
Here’s the part I find most true for our business. Realtors are wired to keep their options open. No salary, feast or famine, so every lead, every relationship, every shiny opportunity gets a soft yes, just in case. We tell ourselves that’s being smart. A lot of the time it’s fear of missing out wearing a business suit.
We’d rather be kinda in on ten things than all in on two, because kinda in feels safe. If you never fully commit, you never have to be caught choosing wrong. A maybe can’t fail. That’s exactly why it’s so comfortable, and exactly why it costs so much.
You think you’re keeping your options open. A lot of the time you’re just afraid to be seen choosing.
Optionality isn’t free insurance. It’s an option you pay a premium on, and it decays while you hold it. Being kinda in on ten things isn’t ten hedges. It’s ten positions you’re under committed on, all quietly losing value while you tell yourself you’re diversified. The agent who commits to one database and one strategy usually captures more, and feels less of that FOMO, because they’re actually winning at the thing they chose instead of half losing at ten.
To be fair, optionality isn’t the villain. Keeping a door open on purpose is a decision. Holding something until September because you need to see one more thing is a real choice, it has a reason and a deadline. Let me think about it with no end date is not a choice. It’s an open loop dressed up as strategy.
So the move is simple, even if it isn’t easy. Go find your maybes. Every one of them becomes a yes, a no, or a date. Not right now becomes decide by Friday. That’s it. You don’t have to finish the thing to feel lighter. You just have to close the loop, because the weight was the openness, not the work.
If you lead a team, this is a good one to run together. The maybe pile is usually where your people’s overwhelm is hiding, and it’s rarely about workload. It’s a dozen half decisions nobody’s been willing to call.
Say yes and do it. Say no and drop it. And when you catch yourself saying maybe, give it a date. Your bandwidth isn’t spent on what you’re doing. It’s spent on what you haven’t decided.
Scott
Scott Mills Coaching
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