{"id":5523,"date":"2025-08-28T13:45:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T13:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/yes-i-can-do-that-is-a-trap\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T13:45:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T13:45:18","slug":"yes-i-can-do-that-is-a-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/yes-i-can-do-that-is-a-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"“Yes, I can do that!” is a trap.<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Yes, I can do that!” is a trap.<\/p>\n

Early in your career, raising your hand to take on more is rewarded. It’s how you get faster growth and more scope, delivering on the gnarly projects that nobody else wants. <\/p>\n

But that can-do attitude becomes a trap as you grow more senior. Your time becomes more valuable and more in demand. If you say yes to everything you _can_ do, you won’t have time or energy for the most important work that _only_ you can do. <\/p>\n

Each incremental request seems manageable when you say yes, but in aggregate, it’s too much work even though you know how to do each individual task. When I was chasing a promotion at Google, I said “Yes, I can do that” until my body collapsed from too many 100 hour work weeks.<\/p>\n

So the question to ask yourself before raising your hand to take something on isn’t “Can I do it?” <\/p>\n

Instead, ask “is this the most impactful thing I could be doing with my valuable time?” If not, maybe find or teach somebody more junior to do it so you can take on something more worthy of your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Yes, I can do that!” is a trap. Early in your career, raising your hand to take on more is rewarded. It’s how you get faster growth and more scope, delivering on the gnarly projects that nobody else wants. But that can-do attitude becomes a trap as you grow more senior. Your time becomes more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}