# Chapter 289

This whole week has been a line of thought about dealing with overwhelm and how to have processes and systems and make progress. Overwhelm can be a constantly refilling well that seems to never run dry. You need to find your way forward with this, because it is not going away. Here we are four days later and my to-do list is still full, not because I haven’t worked diligently on things all week, but because that well of overwhelm just keeps filling back up. Its called life and we obligate ourselves to accomplishing something when we say yes, instead of no. As James Clear said, “Yes is a responsibility. No is a decision.”

Life design is something we all should consider. Is this currently refilling bucket of overwhelm the way I want to be living out the rest of my days? What about next year? Five years from now? If life design is too big an idea to get your mental arms around, what about this: is this approach producing more of the kind of life you want, or less? That constantly refilling bucket of things to accomplish and complete isn’t going to magically stop tomorrow, or next week or next year or next decade! Yes is a responsibility. And every yes produces and produces more and more and more. If it is producing what you want and seek, then excellent. If it is producing less of what you seek, then ouch.

Life design to the rescue. This is why I only have 26 clients, one wife and three kids, because I don’t want more responsibility than this! No is a decision to contain overwhelm, because you can’t put that genie back in the bottle once released.