Not every opportunity is yours

Not every opportunity is yours to take. I keep having to learn that one.

Last week I wrote about saying no to good ideas: how you hold the line for your team's priorities and make the cost of yes visible. This is the personal version. I'm the one who wants to say yes. A new initiative gets proposed, a cross-functional project needs someone, or someone's building something interesting and I want to be part of it. Most of the time there's no emergency. Just a good idea, and I want to get involved.

I've gotten feedback that I take on too much. Shiny object syndrome, manager edition: I want to fix everything and be in the room for a lot of things. The fix is deciding which opportunities are actually mine and seeing those through before I pick up the next one.

When something good is happening, it feels like impact to say "count me in." You're in the loop. You're helping. You're not the person who sat it out.

The cost shows up later. You're spread across five things. Nothing gets your full attention. You're context-switching between half-finished commitments, and the team isn't sure who owns what because you've got a hand in everything. I've been there. In the moment it feels like being useful. You only notice when you're dropping balls or realizing you never quite closed the loop on something you said you'd own.

Most of the opportunities that tempt me are good ideas. So the real question is: is this mine to take, and do I have the capacity to see it through?