This week I got invited to join the board of directors for an international education initiative. I'd love to break into the international conversation about education one day, and honestly, this one lines up pretty well with where I want to go.
I still said no.
The timing just isn't right. And that's kind of been the whole week for me. I've been intentional about not filling up every hour of my day. I'm not signing up for extra stuff, and I'm not taking on new projects that aren't mine. In the space that's opened up, I've been checking in with myself.
Am I okay?
When's the last time you asked yourself that and actually waited for the answer? Most of us ask it the way we ask a coworker in the hallway, already walking away before they respond.
On the show, T'Erica Hudson closed our whole conversation with four words: make your yes count. Right before that, Jonathan Jackson talked about stillness and how he wishes he'd learned it sooner. Saying no to that board is how I'm trying to do both. [Watch the episode]
At the start of September, I told you fueling for Q4 doesn't start the day before. Turns out some of that fuel is rest. Maybe what I'm really looking for in Q4 is margin.
Margin in my calendar. Margin in my head. Margin in my finances. Enough room to actually notice how I'm doing before something forces me to.
That's also where next Sunday's Money Talks episode got me. I told Bryan and Darin about hitting six figures at Brown, eventually making 40% more than I used to, and somehow still feeling like I had no margin. Darin unpacked why more income doesn't automatically create more margin, and Bryan described the kind of friend who'll ask how the shiny new thing fits with the 35,000 other things you're already doing.
I felt very seen.
Money Talks premieres October 4.
Arthur C. Brooks talks about a psychology experiment where people were asked to sit alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes. They had almost nothing to do except push a button that would give them an electric shock, and some of them pushed it.
That's how uncomfortable doing nothing can be.
Brooks' larger point is the one I've been thinking about. Boredom gives our minds room to wander toward the bigger questions about meaning and purpose, and every time there's an empty second, most of us reach for the phone.
→ Go to the source [Watch it here]
Your 1% this week: before Wednesday, take fifteen minutes of nothing. Phone in another room. No podcast, no list, and no trying to turn the fifteen minutes into something productive.
Just sit there and let your mind wander.
When it settles, ask yourself the question.
Don't rush the answer.
Then pick one thing you're going to say no to for the rest of the year, and hit reply to tell me what it is.
Forward this to the person in your life who says yes to everything.
This week's letter is the Basquiat edition, a nod to the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. He started out writing on the walls of downtown New York in the late '70s and ended up in museums around the world, without waiting for anybody's permission. He crossed words out so you'd look at them harder. That felt right for a week about saying no.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hollywood Africans, 1983. Whitney Museum of American Art. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
→ See his work [basquiat.com]
The Invisible Interview · The Invisible Score · The TEF Show
