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There's a sentence that changed the trajectory of my career, though I didn't realize it at the time. It came from the last good boss I had at Caltech, Marianne Haggerty. She delivered the message during what I thought was a routine conversation about competing priorities. But Marianne never forgot that she said it to me—in fact, she had to repeat it to me several times as I kept making the same mistake, saying yes to colleagues' requests for favors that pulled me away from the strategic work we'd mapped out together.
"When you say yes to someone, you are saying no to me."
Eight words. Patient repetition. Profound implications.
What Marianne was teaching me had a name, though neither of us knew it at the time. Years later, I'd discover that organizational psychologist Adam Grant had been researching the exact principle she'd been patiently drilling into me: that productivity isn't about time management—it's about attention management. As Grant puts it, focusing on time management "just makes us more aware of how many of those hours we waste" (Grant, 2019). What matters instead is learning to "prioritize the people and projects that matter" (Grant, 2019).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back then, I was just a guy who couldn't say no to a favor.
The Architecture of Ordinary Moments
I've spent many hours over the years thinking about how small actions accumulate into organizational culture—how my Friday donut runs at Caltech became institutional memory, how consistent small gestures build trust that survives major disruptions. But this moment was different. This wasn't about building culture through repetition. This was about how a single reframe can fundamentally alter someone's decision-making apparatus.
Marianne wasn't trying to be profound. She was trying to teach me something I kept failing to learn: that when long-time colleagues asked for favors—help with projects outside normal processes, quick fixes that would only take "a few minutes"—I needed to consider what I was abandoning rather than defaulting to helpfulness. Every commitment, she was showing me, exists in relationship to other commitments. Attention isn't just finite—it's relationally finite.
The architecture of those repeated conversations has proven remarkably durable. Each time Marianne had to remind me of this principle, she was building a framework that would eventually become automatic. What started as a lesson I kept forgetting became the foundation for how I approach everything from email responses to strategic planning.
It's exactly what John Wooden meant about little details making big things happen. Not because the detail itself was earth-shattering, but because it provided a structural principle that would inform thousands of subsequent decisions.
Beyond the Eisenhower Matrix
I've written before about the Eisenhower Decision Matrix and how it helped me navigate competing priorities throughout my career. But my boss's insight added a dimension that the traditional urgent/important framework misses entirely: the relational physics of finite attention.
The Eisenhower Matrix is brilliant for categorizing tasks, but it doesn't address the emotional and political reality that every yes creates a disappointed no somewhere else in the system. It assumes that good priority-setting is primarily about personal productivity rather than organizational loyalty.
What I didn't understand then was that Marianne was teaching me about what Patrick Lencioni calls "First Team" loyalty (Lencioni, 2002). Your first team isn't the people you manage or the colleagues who ask for favors—it's the leadership team you're part of. Every time I said yes to a colleague's request outside our strategic plan, I was demonstrating that my loyalty lay with being helpful rather than being strategically aligned.
Grant's research would later validate what I was learning the hard way: that productivity struggles aren't usually about efficiency—they're about motivation (Grant, 2019). When colleagues asked for favors, I wasn't just bad at time management. I was saying yes for the wrong reasons, relying on willpower to push through competing demands instead of being naturally pulled toward what mattered most.
The Physics Are Unforgiving
What Marianne helped me understand—and what Grant's research validates—is that attention operates under laws as predictable as physics (Grant, 2019). The favors I kept agreeing to seemed harmless in isolation, but they created a pattern where my strategic work suffered while I solved everyone else's urgent problems.
Grant's insight about timing adds another crucial dimension to this framework. As he puts it, "It's not about time; it's about timing" (Grant, 2019). You might spend the same amount of time on tasks even after rearranging your schedule. The difference is that you're "noticing the order of tasks that works for you and adjusting accordingly" (Grant, 2019).
I've watched too many well-intentioned colleagues burn out trying to violate these basic laws. They say yes to everyone, thinking they're being helpful, not realizing they're creating a system where no one gets their full attention. They mistake responsiveness for responsibility, availability for competence.
The physics are unforgiving. You can redistribute attention, but you can't manufacture it. You can be strategic about where you focus, but you can't focus everywhere simultaneously. Understanding this doesn't make you selfish—it makes you honest about the trade-offs inherent in any finite system.
When I started applying this framework to my own management style, it changed how I talked to my teams about competing demands. Instead of pretending we could do everything, we started having explicit conversations about attention allocation. Instead of promising the impossible, we started making conscious choices about whose priorities would take precedence when conflicts emerged.
The result wasn't that we disappointed more people—it was that we disappointed them more strategically, with advance notice and clear reasoning. We created what Lencioni calls "healthy conflict" around priority-setting rather than avoiding those conversations and letting competing demands create passive-aggressive dysfunction (Lencioni, 2002).
People can handle not being the priority if they understand why and when they might be again. More importantly, teams function better when everyone understands what the first team's commitments actually are, rather than trying to guess based on who's getting attention day-to-day.
What We Pass Down Without Realizing
Here's what humbles me about those repeated conversations: Marianne knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn't just managing immediate priorities—she was patiently building a framework that would serve me for decades. Each time she had to remind me about the physics of finite attention, she was making a deliberate investment in my development as a leader.
In many ways, Marianne was teaching me what Grant describes as the essence of sustainable productivity: shifting from external pressure to internal motivation (Grant, 2019). The end goal wasn't becoming more efficient—it was becoming more intentional.
But Marianne also recognized that I needed more than just her repeated reminders. She encouraged me to work with an executive coach—someone who could help me develop the self-awareness to understand why I kept falling into the same patterns. That's how I found David Samuels at DLS Partners, whose focus on helping leaders become genuinely authentic gave me the tools to finally internalize what Marianne had been teaching me.
That's how inheritance works in organizational life. The casual comments, the throwaway observations, the small moments of clarity—these often have more lasting impact than formal training or intentional mentoring. We're all inheriting frameworks from conversations we barely remember, and we're all bequeathing them through interactions we think are routine.
Working with David helped me understand the deeper psychological patterns beneath my surface behaviors. Through our coaching sessions, I began to see how my people-pleasing tendencies and conflict avoidance were actually preventing me from showing up as my complete, conscious self at work.
Now, when I hear myself repeating that phrase to my own teams—"When you say yes to someone, you are saying no to me"—I'm conscious that I'm not just managing current priorities. I'm potentially shaping how they'll think about attention and loyalty for the rest of their careers.
David's approach helped me see that Marianne's framework wasn't about creating rigid hierarchy—it was about conscious choice-making. The goal wasn't to become someone who says no reflexively, but to become someone who says yes and no intentionally, with full awareness of the implications.
The Details That Build Big Things
Looking back, I can trace a direct line from that eight-word sentence to some of the most important decisions I've made—career moves, team structures, even how I approach parenting. The principle that every yes requires a corresponding no has become central to how I think about stewardship, whether I'm managing a database conversion project or helping my children understand why they can't participate in every activity that interests them.
Grant's research helps explain why this framework has been so durable: it's grounded in intrinsic motivation rather than external pressure (Grant, 2019). When I learned to ask "If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to that matters more?" I wasn't just managing my time better—I was aligning my attention with my values. As Grant puts it, this approach means "you'll be naturally pulled into it by intrinsic motivation" rather than having to rely on willpower to push through (Grant, 2019).
It's helped me be more honest about trade-offs, more strategic about commitments, and more comfortable with the inherent limitations that make prioritization necessary in the first place. Most importantly, it's taught me that good leadership often requires disappointing the right people at the right time for the right reasons—not out of callousness, but out of commitment to the decisions you've made with your first team.
This is what John Wooden understood about details: they matter not because they're intrinsically important, but because they create frameworks that guide countless future decisions. A coach's attention to fundamentals shapes how players approach the game long after they leave the team. A boss's casual comment about priorities influences how someone thinks about loyalty and stewardship for decades.
The Ripple Effect of Ordinary Wisdom
I wonder sometimes about the conversations my own teams will remember twenty years from now. Which throwaway comments will become foundational principles? Which casual interactions will shape how they approach leadership when it's their turn?
Perhaps they'll remember the distinction between time management and attention management. Perhaps they'll understand, as Grant suggests, that attention management "leads to improved productivity, but it's about much more than checking things off a to-do list" (Thomas, 2019, as cited in Grant, 2019). Maybe they'll carry forward the insight that sustainable productivity isn't about doing more—it's about doing what matters most, for the right reasons, with full attention.
The responsibility is both humbling and energizing. Every interaction is potentially architectural—not just of current relationships, but of future frameworks that will outlive any specific workplace or project.
My boss's insight about the physics of finite attention has become something I consciously choose to pass forward, not just as a management technique but as a way of thinking about stewardship and accountability. It's my contribution to the ongoing conversation about how we can be honest about limitations while still striving for excellence.
What David taught me was that this framework only works when it's grounded in authentic self-awareness rather than people-pleasing disguised as conscientiousness. His emphasis on developing leaders who combine genuine empathy with the courage to make difficult decisions helped me understand that saying no isn't a failure of compassion—it's often the most compassionate thing you can do for everyone involved, including the person making the request.
Because in the end, the little details that make big things happen aren't just about efficiency or productivity. They're about the frameworks we inherit, adapt, and pass forward—one ordinary conversation at a time.
The physics of finite attention can't be changed, but they can be understood. And understanding them—with the help of insights from leaders like Marianne and researchers like Grant—might just be the little detail that makes the big difference.
The physics of finite attention can't be changed, but they can be understood. And understanding them—with the help of insights from leaders like Marianne, coaches like David, and researchers like Grant—might just be the little detail that makes the big difference.
References
Grant, A. (2019, March 28). Productivity isn't about time management. It's about attention management. The New York Times. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/smarter-living/productivity-isnt-about-time- management-its-about-attention-management.html
Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. Jossey-Bass.
Thomas, M. (2019). Attention management: How to create success and gain productivity—every day. McGraw Hill.
