When Saying “Yes” Became the Goal: Learning to Loosen the Grip

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For a long time, I was proud of how often I could say no. I had work to do, responsibilities to handle and goals I wanted to reach. If something got in the way of those things, saying no felt like the sensible choice.

There is nothing wrong with that. Discipline helped me build a career, and I still need it. But I started questioning what I was making room for if the things I genuinely enjoyed always had to wait.

Another trip. A restaurant I wanted to try. An evening that didn’t have to produce anything beyond a good memory. Eventually, saying yes to some of those things became a goal of its own.

Why saying no made sense

When you spend years working toward something, you get used to protecting your time. There is always another reason to stay focused, another expense to consider and another responsibility that feels more important than whatever you would rather be doing.

I understand that way of thinking because I’ve lived it. I work full time in automotive finance. I have a budget and a limited amount of vacation time. I can’t simply disappear for a few months because I’ve found a list of restaurants I want to visit.

Saying no has its place. It helps me keep commitments and avoid taking on more than I can reasonably handle. I don’t regret being disciplined. I just don’t want discipline to become an automatic answer before I’ve even considered the opportunity.

The difficulty is that being responsible rarely comes with a clear finish line. There will probably always be something else I could be doing for work, another improvement to make or another reason to wait. If I need all of that to be settled before I enjoy myself, I could be waiting for a very long time.

I don’t think the answer is to pretend those responsibilities disappear. I want to look at the actual decision in front of me. Can I make the time? Can I afford it? Does it interfere with something I’ve already committed to? Those questions are useful. Automatically deciding that pleasure can wait doesn’t tell me nearly as much.

Making room for the things I enjoy

São Paulo helped bring my interest in food and travel back into focus in 2024. The research, the restaurants and the people gave me reasons to keep exploring. I came home wanting to do more of it and to share what I found.

That doesn’t mean every worthwhile experience requires an international flight. I regularly travel more than an hour into New York City to try a meal. Sometimes dinner is the whole reason for going. For me, that is enough.

I like sitting at a counter and watching a kitchen work. I like asking about a dish or finding out why a particular wine goes with it. Those evenings give me something I can’t get from reading a menu at home and deciding that I’ll go someday.

I wrote about the work I would love to spend more of my life doing in The Jobs I’d Do for Free. Food, travel, cars and racing already matter to me. Making time for them is part of figuring out where I want to go next.

Looking back, the interest was there well before I started writing. I took my high school girlfriend to one of Daniel Boulud’s restaurants for her nineteenth birthday. I went to food and wine events because I wanted to taste things and learn. I didn’t need a website or a business plan to care about a good meal.

What changed was recognizing how much of my attention already went toward these subjects. I could spend hours researching restaurants before a trip and keep looking into them after I got home. That curiosity deserves some space in my life. I want to follow it far enough to find out what I can do with it.

I still like having a plan

Learning to say yes hasn’t made me someone who stops planning. If anything, planning helps me do more of the things I want to do.

A race weekend is a good example. I want to enjoy the circuit, but I also want time to get back to the hotel and go out for dinner. That means thinking about transport, traffic and reservation times. My São Paulo Grand Prix travel guide comes from working through those details in person.

The planning is useful because it makes the experience possible. I don’t want the schedule to become more important than enjoying the trip. There needs to be room to adjust when something takes longer than expected or another idea comes along.

There is a practical side to saying yes that gets overlooked. A trip has to fit around the days I can take off. A dinner reservation needs to work with the rest of the evening. Getting those details right gives me a better chance of enjoying the thing I decided to do in the first place.

I’ve also learned that there will be things I miss. In Peru, I came home thinking about restaurants I hadn’t managed to visit, including Central. I wish I’d been more persistent about that reservation. But missing something doesn’t erase what I did experience. It gives me another reason to research a return trip instead of treating one visit as my only opportunity.

Some things still deserve a no

I’m not trying to say yes to everything. Time and money still matter. So does whether I actually want to do something, rather than feeling that I should because it sounds impressive.

An expensive experience can disappoint. A simple meal can be worth the drive. I want to make those decisions based on what interests me and what I can afford, then be honest about whether it was worthwhile.

I don’t want every experience to need a justification beyond wanting to be there. Some meals will become articles, and some trips will give me ideas for future work. But I still want to enjoy the evening itself, even if the only result is that I had a good time.

The change is that enjoyment now gets a place in the decision. Something doesn’t have to help my career or produce an immediate result to deserve a few hours of my time.

Having a budget means choosing. I can want several things and still decide that only one makes sense right now. That is part of how I travel. There are more restaurants I’d like to try than I can fit into a trip, and more trips I’d like to take than I have vacation days.

I’d rather put thought into those choices than agree to something just because someone else would consider it a good opportunity. A full calendar doesn’t automatically mean I’m spending my time well. I need enough interest in the experience to justify the time, effort and money it takes to get there.

What I want the work to make possible

I still have ambitions. I’m building this website around subjects I care about, and I would love to turn more of that work into a career. None of that happens without effort or consistency.

Writing about these experiences has given me another way to enjoy them. I pay attention to what I would tell someone who was considering the same restaurant or trip. Was the service comfortable? Did the meal live up to what I hoped for? What would I book again, and what would I approach differently?

I wish I had documented more of the meals and places I visited years ago. I can remember certain details, but I would like to have more photographs and notes to go with them. I can’t recreate those visits now. I can do a better job of recording the experiences I’m having and make something useful from them.

There is no guarantee about where this will lead. I would love to spend a few years traveling, eating, trying interesting cars and catching races along the way. For now, I’m building toward that while working full time. Each article gives me somewhere to put the research, the opinions and the things I learned by showing up.

That is why saying yes matters to me. It gives the interests I’ve had for years a chance to become a bigger part of my life. I still need to do the work and make sensible decisions. I also need to get out there sometimes, because the next experience isn’t going to happen while I’m only thinking about it.

But I also want to enjoy some of what I’m working toward while I’m working toward it. I don’t want every meal, trip or idea to stay on a list until life becomes perfectly convenient.

For now, that means fitting experiences around the job and budget I actually have. Saying no when I need to, and giving myself a chance to say yes when I can.