Your Choices Limit Your Choices (and That’s a Good Thing)

One of the great things about running a personal-finance website that publishes stories at 8 a.m., 10 a.m., noon, and 2 p.m. Eastern is how it effectively limits my choices until about 1 p.m. Central.*

No, I can’t do interviews in the morning.

No, I can’t attend that networking breakfast.

Sorry, I can’t do revisions on this piece until the afternoon — will that work for you?

You can see how I might frame these responses differently depending on whether I’m RSVPing to an invite or replying to a freelance client’s email, but the decision is the same either way.

I already have responsibilities that take up this particular chunk of time, so I cannot give that time to anything else.

Obviously there are exceptions. Of course there are exceptions. Sometimes the interview can only be conducted in the morning because the other person is in Europe and that’s how time zones work. Sometimes a freelance client will email to say “I’ll pay you extra if you can rework this piece in the next 30 minutes,” and I am not one to turn down extra money (nor am I one to turn down the chance to become That One Reliable Freelancer).

But 90 percent of the time, the answer is no.