Doing good things for bad reasons is an easy way to burn yourself out and do more harm than good.
You have finite juice to do things you actually want to do, and you won’t run out of good options any time soon. But most people try to do too many things for bad reasons, and not only do they overload themselves – they don’t even do those things well!
We’ve all had that friend that didn’t want to see the movie that the group had decided to see together, but they went anyway because they didn’t want to be left out. And then that friend complains the whole time, talks through the movie, etc. They spend money to have a miserable time, and they dampen the time of everyone else.
That same trap exists in business, too. You join some team at work because you don’t want to be left out, but you don’t actually want to be there – so you don’t contribute much and you end up spending a bunch of time just to hurt your own professional reputation.
It’s a true superpower to be able to just say no to things without eliminating your role in the larger social fabric. You can say, “I’m actually going to see a different movie playing around the same time, want to meet up for burgers after?” And you can say “I’m fully loaded on projects where I can give 100%, I don’t want to dilute my contributions – let’s sync up in a month and see what info we can share with each other.”
That’s the walk of confidence. It’ll make you happier and more successful – and you don’t even have to do anything.
The Opportunity Machine 