Furthermore, the bane of saying no to people is that you will not be liked by everyone. People will think you are mean, arrogant or even self-centred. Steve was okay with that. So much that once a harsh critique by Steve led Ive to ask him if he could go a little easy on the team. Steve being Steve said, “You’re vain, you want people to like you”. Jobs wanted Ive’s complete focus to be on their product and nothing else.

This raises the question though, should you be rude or unhelpful? Definitely not!

What I understood from this interview is that saying “no” is of 2 kinds.

Personal and external ideas.

• Personal ideas: Students, Entrepreneurs and artists can get several great ideas. You must decide which one needs to be executed first and either put others for later or cancel them out of your mental list entirely. When I say later, its not just days or weeks, it could be years.

E.g., You have a great business idea and simultaneously another problem-solving project that you want to try out. However, depending on your situation you must decide which one will be most beneficial to the world and to you. Maybe the project requires a huge capital and an audience, while your business when executed properly can give you both of those factors. This is when you’ll have to put the project on hold and focus completely on developing your business. Once you gain an audience and a capital to invest in this idea, you’ll pursue it and execute in a much better manner.

• External ideas: This doesn’t even have to be an idea. These can be small things. Small tasks. At your house, office or university there will always be someone in need of help. You need to balance out helping them and finishing your own work together. Yes, there will be situations where you must learn to refuse politely if it’s not possible to help someone with their work. I feel its better to decline rather than saying yes and not committing to it because you were too busy. I have been on both ends where I have said yes out of fear of being disliked and then ended up having a lot of work which was stressful. On the other hand, a lot of people have struggled to say no to me and then failed to fulfil the task at hand.

Photo by Jonas Svidras

I believe, to focus is to balance being selfish and being selfless. Too much of either one will always be harmful to you personally and professionally.

You don’t have to be a mean person, but your goal shouldn’t be about making everyone happy. One can be respectful and yet have boundaries, and even then there will be those who dislike you or your manner of work. Being kind and respectful because it’s the right thing to do, is I believe much more profound than being good simply because you want people to like you or pay you a compliment.

Your goal, your focus should completely be on the value you bring to others through your work and craft.