Hello friend,

Every Thursday, I send a 4-minute breakdown of a framework that will help you claw back time and think with clarity even in the most testing moments. If you are new here, welcome! And if you’ve been forwarded this email, I’d love for you to subscribe.

Stop wasting time on low return opportunities. That’s it. That’s the hook.

Whatever your thing is—a journalism outfit, a community nonprofit, a social enterprise, a creator business, or a coaching practice—you know the drill. An invitation lands in your inbox: a speaking gig, a “quick” call, a potential partnership. It sounds good, maybe even flattering. You say yes.

Fast forward: The meeting spawns follow-ups, more emails, maybe even a commitment you didn’t really want to make. And what’s the return on investment? Often, not great.

Independently of one another, four coaching clients came to me recently with this exact issue. They didn’t yet have a system for evaluating opportunities. They, like me, tended to rely on gut instinct or a vague sense of obligation. The result? Time sinks, misaligned projects, and decision fatigue.

Here’s how we changed that in four minutes.

🙅‍♂️ THE OPPORTUNITY SCORECARD 🙅‍♂️

Every leader, entrepreneur, and creator deserves a decision matrix; a simple tool to weigh options against clear, pre-set criteria. It removes emotion and social pressure from the equation. It helps you focus on what is really aligned with your strategy.

When to use it

Use a decision matrix when you’re faced with multiple or frequent opportunities and need a clear, objective way to prioritise them and protect your time. It’s especially useful for evaluating speaking gigs, partnerships, meeting invites, funding options, or major strategic decisions—anywhere gut instinct alone might lead you astray.

Why it works

Humans are wired for loss aversion and social reciprocity, which makes saying no difficult—we fear missing out or offending others (especially if you are British 😉).

A decision matrix counteracts these biases by externalising the decision, shifting it from an emotional response to a structured process. It leverages cognitive offloading, reducing mental strain by pre-defining criteria instead of making ad-hoc judgments. It also combats decision fatigue, preventing the erosion of willpower that leads to defaulting to “yes.”

How it works

1. Define your goal. What are you actually optimising for? More impact? Visibility? Revenue? Set your north star before evaluating anything.

2. Identify your criteria. What makes an opportunity worthwhile? Common factors include audience relevance, strategic alignment, potential return (e.g. access to funders or clients), time required, and gut feel. List your criteria as columns in a simple table.

3. Assign weights. Some criteria matter more than others. Rank them by importance (e.g., “mission alignment” might be worth double “networking potential”).

4. Score each opportunity. Rate each on a consistent scale (I use 1–4 to keep things simple and avoid a non-commital midpoint). Multiply by the assigned weights, then total the scores.

5. Make the call. If comparing two opportunities, highest-scoring options win. If you are evaluating them on a case-by-case basis, you might want to set a threshold. If something scores low, it’s an easy no.

Take it to the next level

Even with a decision matrix, saying no can feel awkward. Even with the best of time-protecting intentions, we often leave the door slightly ajar. That’s where the pre-written ‘no’ email comes in.

There’s a great (and almost certainly apocryphal) story that Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish philosopher and essayist, when invited to contribute to a publication, responded with

Dear Sir, Thank you for your letter. I decline. Sincerely, Miguel de Unamuno.

Short. Respectful. No wiggle room.

You can also use Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah or No model and Cal Newport’s time-blocking to level up your personal productivity in this regard.

🔮 FUTUREPROOFING 🔮

While a strict decision matrix helps cut out low-value distractions, it also risks limiting unexpected opportunities—the kind that don’t score well on paper but lead to breakthroughs.

I’ve always been a little risk averse in this regard and suffered for it. Some of the people I admire most in my career are amazing at growing their luck surface area. To do this without relying on random meetings, intentionally expose yourself to serendipity.

The best ways I’ve found to do that have been through sharing my work publicly, engaging authentically in communities, and creating inbound opportunities where the right people find you.

Writing, podcasting, resource creation - all of these can yield valuable connections. Set yourself a quota (e.g., one wildcard opportunity per quarter) to keep your thinking fresh, especially in times of [*waves hands at everything*] uncertainty.

🪁 PARALLEL PLAY 🪁

Some delightful distractions.

• Have I shared Jogging House with you before? I forget. Anyway, s’probably my most listened to music while working. Calming, repetitive, focusing.

• Mattia Peretti’s News Alchemists newsletter is a salve for hope in the sea of pretty relentless negativity surrounding journalism.

• Martijn Doolaard’s YouTube channel is a long time favourite. For years now, he has been renovating and living in a remote stone cabin in the Italian Alps. I’m convinced he is the Proust of YouTube.

🌊 WAVE GOODBYE 🌊

Thanks for being here, I really appreciate it.

If you like this newsletter, you might also like my YouTube project. This year, I’m focusing more on what it means to be a multipotentialite human (that is someone who does many things, values learning above all else, and often struggles to fit into neat career boxes).

My latest video is about fatherhood, but I’ve also published videos about the problem with KPIs, a self-retreat I took last year to Vlieland, why you’re not getting any funding, the need to degrow journalism, why I run, and the necessity to create like no-one is watching.

YouTube is a hard game to get into in 2025. Being a beginner is exhausting.

That feeling of incompetence, the pressure to be great right away, the voice in your head whispering, you should be further along by now.

But nobody starts out great. The only way to get good at something is to be bad at it first. Try to focus on the work, not the uncertainty. The doubt will always be there. The trick is to keep going anyway. Everyone feels this way sometimes.

Take care,

Adam

p.s. First time here? Like what you see? Subscribe for more!