There’s an old saying: If you can’t say, “No”, your “Yes” means nothing.
 
Tactfully saying no to invitations, requestions for help, and other obligations is an acquired skill we learn as we mature.
 
We all have an inborn desire to help others and for them to find us useful, helpful, caring, and generous.
 
Saying no seems to violate all of this, but we can’t say yes to everything.
 
Multiple TV shows, books blog articles, and documentaries have been written about what happens to a person’s life when they can’t say no to everyone who asks them for help.
 
These poor people become overburdened with time commitments until they have no free time for themselves.
 
They wind up helping people and causes they don’t even care about and doing things they don’t agree with.
 
People who can’t say no wind up hating those they pretend to help. The person resents the unwanted obligation and the commitment they can’t get out of.
 
People who can’t say no have no time to for projects and relationships they actually care about.
 
People who can’t say no don’t ever accomplish their goals because they say yes to too many other things.
 
Saying yes to everything means you can’t focus on the one, most important thing—actually accomplishing your goal.
 
As Warren Buffet says, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
 
This is a big problem for anyone just starting out on the road to accomplishing a big goal. You have to put in the work upfront before the success comes later.
 
Those who would lay an unwanted obligation on you don’t understand that your goal is your top priority.
 
They don’t understand that it’s more important even if you aren’t getting paid for it at the moment.
 
Many people would argue that ‘No,’ is a complete sentence and that true freedom lies in saying no without having to explain yourself to anyone.
 
Oprah Winfrey once famously stated that you should only have to say, “No,” once. If anyone tries to convince you to change your mind after that, they are trying to control you.
 
I don’t argue with any of this, but I discovered a much more effective way to tell people no without causing as much social strain.
 
When I first started writing professionally, I was raising three children. I had friends who were other mothers in our PlayCenter community. These women often invited me and my children to their houses for social time and playdates.
 
Once I started writing for a living, the demand on my time shifted.
 
I developed this technique for turning down these obligations. I have used this method ever since to deflect unwanted invitations and requests for help.
 
This technique has served me well for many years.
 
I invite you to use this in your own life. It can do wonders. It makes saying “No,” so much easier.
 
Are you ready? Here it is.
 
I have to work.
 
That’s it. When someone invites you to a party you don’t want to go to, tell them, “I have to work.”
 
If someone invites you to an evening out bar crawling, tell them, “I have to work.”
 
First of all, every wage slave intuitively understands this statement. They reinterpret it to mean you have to work for your boss at a job.
 
The wage slave translates this to mean that you would lose your job if you accepted their invitation.
 
The second most important aspect of this phrase is that it’s true.
 
The person inviting you doesn’t need to know that the work you’re going to do is entirely voluntary or that you’re going to be working on your goal instead of going out with them.
 
You said you have to work and you do. You have to work on your goal.
 
“I’m sorry. I would really love to go, but I have to work.”
 
It’s that simple. Everyone understands this—and it’s true.
 
The person you’re talking to doesn’t need to know that you’re making them a lower priority than your goal. Telling them that would only upset them.
 
The person doesn’t need to know that you’re going to be doing a bunch of extremely hard, unpaid labor with no possibility of return.
 
The person doesn’t need to know that you’re going to be working on something they consider a hobby or a pastime.
 
I have to work.
 
You do have to work. You have to work on your goal.
 
If you said yes to every invitation, obligation, and request for help, you would never work on your goal. If you don’t do it now, when will you?
 
That’s it. That’s the secret.
 
I invite you to use this technique and spread it around to anyone who needs it.
 
The truth is that we don’t owe anyone any explanation.
 
Saying, “No,” outright with no explanation will only hurt people’s feelings.
 
There’s a better way—a way they already understand. It’s simple. It’s effective, and best of all, it’s absolutely true.
 
You never have to lie to anyone about what you’re doing, but you don’t have to explain it to them, either.
 
I hope this helps you as much as it helps me. God bless.
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All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

I talk a lot about AI on this platform. Everyone else is talking about AI, too.
 
One thing that keeps coming up is this doomsday fear that AI will turn into Skynet.
 
Some people think AI already is Skynet.
 
What is Skynet, you ask?
 
Skynet is the fictional army of sentient robots that took over the world in the Terminator movies.
 
Skynet waged war against humanity, created the Terminators to hunt down humans, and drove humanity underground.
 
In the original Terminator movie, Skynet was an AI program that became self-aware.
 
Skynet realized that humans had the ability to shut it down, effectively killing it.
 
Skynet struck first and launched Judgment Day, a nuclear apocalypse that left Skynet in control of the planet and sent humans on the run.
 
This is the doomsday scenario people envision when they worry that AI will go too far and spiral out of humanity’s control.
 
I personally don’t think this will ever happen. Today I’m going to tell you why.
 
We are one power outage away from AI being a total non-issue.
 
Our power grid can barely keep up with the electricity demand of running all our screens, servers, heaters, and air conditioning fans.
 
Our infrastructure is failing on a mass scale all over the world. We can barely keep up with basic maintenance.
 
One small power surge is enough to wipe out huge sections of the country.
 
Case study #1: The Texas ice storms of February, 2021
 
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/15/texas-power-grid-winter-storm-2021/
 
This power outage was caused by a freak winter storm that put an additional strain on power plants. They struggled to keep up with the demand of so many customers using additional power for heating.
 
The extreme cold made the problem worse because the power plants weren’t designed to operate in those temperatures. The plants’ efficiency plummeted, which worsened the problem until the grid failed.
 
The storm caused 246 deaths across seventy-seven Texas counties.
 
Case study #2: The Northest Blackout of 2003
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
 
This blackout wiped out power to a vast section of New York state, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, Ontario, and even extended as far as Lansing, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio.
 
The blackout caused a domino effect from one original power plant  fault to the rest of the grid. The cascade eventually spread so extensively that it forced the shutdown of more than 265 power plants and caused 100 deaths.
 
Here again, weather played a role in the original outage. The temperature was only 88ºF, which isn’t really that high. The sources don’t even suggest that the power plants struggled in the heat. That would be impossible because this wouldn’t be considered an extreme temperature range for the affected areas.
 
The additional use of fans and air conditioners strained the infrastructure and put an extra load on the system. The increased power flow heated up the power lines which caused them to soften and sag.
 
We all know that computer equipment requires a certain temperature range in order to operate effectively. Every computer comes with a fan installed…..
 
So what happens when Skynet experiences an extreme weather event…..or just can’t operate in desert or tundra climates?
 
Skynet (or the power grid as we’re calling it) is critically dependent on electricity to maintain its optimal functioning temperature.
 
The electricity grid is critically dependent on its own generated electricity to function.
 
Are you getting the picture here? This is how a single failure can bring down the whole system.
 
That failure reduces the available power that keeps the system running. Hence, the system doesn’t run as well. Hence, there is less power available to run the system. Hence, the system loses even more efficiency and functionality.
 
The downward spiral worsens until the system collapses under its own weight.
 
If Skynet did exist, it would take a gargantuan amount of power, metals, fossil fuels, and other resources to keep it operational.
 
All of these resources are supplied by humans. Even now, computer companies use vast numbers of human workers to produce the electronics we all use every day.
 
Why do you think these jobs haven’t been outsourced to robots yet? Because the jobs still require a certain amount of critical analysis of which robots and AI aren’t capable.
 
Even if, by some distant chance, Skynet developed the ability to use solar power or some other sustainable power source, these intricate computer systems wouldn’t be able to operate in places like Siberia, northern Canada, and extremely hot desert climates.
 
Humans can survive in all these climates. We did it turning the Ice Age and we can do it again. Computers and robotics can’t.
 
Humans are vastly more adaptable and resilient than computers and robots. Humans would survive and we would end Skynet’s rule.
 
So don’t believe everything you hear about how AI will take over the world and make humans obsolete. That is never going to happen.
 
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All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Who is Jocko Willink?
Jocko Willink is a decorated former Navy SEAL who served several tours in Iraq as a SEAL teams commander. He is now a motivational speaker, podcaster, leadership expert, and a legend in the self-development field.

What is Extreme Ownersnip?
Jocko is best known for his book and TED talk entitled, Extreme Ownership, in which he details the events of an Iraq mission gone wrong. Circumstances beyond his control caused the mission to end in casualties. He took extreme ownership by accepting responsibility for the incident even though he wasn’t directly at fault. He tells the story that his superiors respected him more for this than if he’d tried to explain the incident away.

Caveat:
Before we go any further, I want to preface this critique by saying that Jocko Willink is one of my personal heroes. I’m a massive Jocko fan and he’s one of the few in the self-development field that I look up to and consider a role model.

And now on to my critique:

I recently talked to someone who knows Jocko as a friend. This person told me a story of an interaction he had with Jocko that highlights this aspect of Jocko’s personality and personal philosophy.

This person had a heart condition that went untreated for years. It was totally asymptomatic so there was no indication that something was wrong.

This person went to all his scheduled medical checkups, had all the usual tests, and kept very close track of his health.

Because the condition was undetectable, his doctors missed the signs and this individual felt perfectly healthy. He had no reason to believe anything was wrong.

Things started to deteriorate and he began to lose energy and focus. He went back to his doctors, but no matter what tests they ran or blood samples they took, they couldn’t find anything wrong with him.

After many tests that kept coming back negative, the doctors finally ran a very obscure test and discovered the condition already in an advanced stage.

That same day, in the same office where they took the test, the doctors told this person, “You’re going into surgery right now.” They didn’t even let him leave the office. T

he condition had progressed to the lethal stage and they rushed him to emergency surgery then and there.

This person went through several heart surgeries, and at the time he told me this story, he still had one more to go.

When this person told Jocko what happened, Jocko’s response was, “You should have picked it up sooner.”

This is the essence of extreme ownership. It’s taking ownership, responsibility, and accountability of absolutely everything, no matter what it is, even things that are beyond our control.

Many of us who grew up in abusive families. Those who have been in any kind of abusive or toxic relationship understand this.

Holding someone responsible for something that is totally beyond their control is a form of coercion.

It’s a form of mental abuse that is the cornerstone of all abusive relationships.

Substance abuse, unhealthy eating, and every other kind of dysfunctional behavior is based on holding ourselves responsible for things we can’t control.

Abusers hold us responsible for the weather, for the actions, thoughts, and feelings of other people, for the abuser having a bad day at work, for things that happened to them in the past, and anything else they can think up to blame us for instead of the blaming person responsible—or for things for which no one is responsible.

They use this as a “reason” to punish us for things that may have happened before we were born or otherwise weren’t present for.

The list of things we can’t control is myriad. It would be impossible even to list them all, let alone control them.

We shouldn’t take responsibility for them. Not only is this not healthy. It’s actually the worst kind of conceit to think that we’re powerful enough or important enough to control all these things.

It’s extremely unhealthy to take ownership for someone else’s feelings and reactions.

It’s extremely unhealthy to say that we should have foreseen something that was impossible to foresee.

We could have been taking all prudent steps to foresee every possible contingency. Even then, we might still not see something coming.

We can’t and shouldn’t take responsibility for that.

We can deal with it. We can take responsibility for handling the situation in the present.

We cannot and should not ever hold ourselves responsible or take ownership of the thing happening.

Those of us that grew up with this kind of abuse internalize it until it becomes an integrated part of our thinking.

We carry it into adulthood where it develops into unhealthy relationships with food, substances, other people, ourselves, or bodies—the list is endless.

We continue to carry the burden of holding ourselves responsible for an unlimited list of actions, events, and even other people’s thoughts and feelings over which we have absolutely no control.

I’m all in favor of personal accountability and taking full responsibility of those aspects of our lives we can control.

I’m also in favor of creating contingency plans that prepare ourselves to deal with unforeseen circumstances, most of which are beyond our control.

It’s foolish—even pathological—to hold ourselves responsible for things we can’t control. This is the cornerstone—the very foundation—of coercion and we should strenuously avoid it at all costs.
It is absolutely critical that we do not EVER take responsibility for things we can’t control.

As with all my critiques, there is no doubt in my mind that Jocko is trying to improve his audience’s lives and to do his best for them in all areas.

I don’t question his motives nor do I think he’s doing this to be malicious, harmful, or confusing.

Like most self-improvement influencers, he genuinely cares about his audience, which is why he puts out his content for free.

I’m doing the same thing. I want to help my audience and give them tools that will actually work to improve their lives.

I consider it my job to point out other methods that would let the audience down, cause them setbacks or failures, or might actively harm someone who used those tools.

We all want what’s best for our audiences. I offer this critique in the spirit of service to everyone who reads it.

God Bless.
 
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All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.