Anything Less Than Yes

If you have read a few of these, you will have noticed that I am an authority on how not to do it. I know exactly how failing feels. I have taken more or less every dead end that was offered to me, in work and with women, and I took some of them twice.

The good part is that I have nearly run out of new ones. And if experience makes a man rich, I am comfortable.

So here is the one thing I have that is worth passing on, arrived at through years of walking into walls:

When you are facing a decision, and your yes is not a hundred per cent yes, it is a no.

The compromises I made with myself always came back for me. The job's decent enough? I'll take it. It'll do. And then I put far more into it than it ever returned, to me or to anybody else.

Or: this woman suits me well. Well? That is a no.

Because first I will start, without noticing, to adjust her. And second I will not do the work that a hundred per cent would have made effortless.

The good moments were real. That was never the question.

The question is what you do on the ordinary Tuesday, and on an ordinary Tuesday a ninety per cent yes is a slow no.