What you give airtime to will expand

Successful operators intentionally direct their recipients' attention. Focus less on what you can't do, and more on what you can do.

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Read time: 6 minutes

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There’s a lesson from sales that applies to communicating any idea:

Focus less on what you can’t do, and more time on what you can do.

Most people do the opposite: They spend too much time explaining why something isn’t possible. That is helpful for context, of course, so it's a matter of degrees.

If you beat a dead horse here, you end up sounding like a naysayer who lacks creativity and can’t get things done.

[A caveat: There are times when explaining thoroughly why something is not possible makes sense. If you think it’s truly important, definitely spend the time to do it. I’m not talking about those situations here. I’m talking about times when you are accidentally focusing too much on what you can’t do, when you could simply propose what you’re willing to do.]

Generally, you want to direct people’s attention to what you want them to think about.

Use this structure:

“I can’t do that, but I can do this."

Here are examples:

“I have a call during that time, but I can meet between 12-4:30pm. Does anything in that window work for you?”

“I can't approve the entire budget request, but I can allocate 70% of what you're asking for now and revisit the remaining next quarter once we see how the campaign performs.”

“I won’t be able to join the committee ongoing, but I’m happy to do a 1:1 call and be a thought partner to discuss the high level strategy if you want to bounce ideas.”

So that’s the basic structure.

Notice how in each example above, I mention very briefly what I can’t do, then immediately redirect to what I can or am willing do.

Now, let’s vary the phrasing. You don’t have to use the words can’t or won’t for this to work.

Often, I avoid can’t/won’t altogether because those words highlight what’s lacking, and I don’t want to highlight that.

Here’s an example of using the general structure without saying “I can’t do x.”

“We’ll need to update the ship date because X is taking longer than expected. But I can present what we have with 70% of the project complete, which includes sharing our results so far, learnings, and next steps. Let me know if this sounds good.”

Check out the color-coded annotations below:

^ I could have only said, “I can’t meet the original deadline because X is taking longer than expected.”

There are times you may want to say this in a matter-of-fact way. Other times, you may not want to admit so explicitly that you can’t meet the original deadline. On many teams, straight up saying “I can’t meet the original deadline” might invite avoidable pushback or upset colleagues, whereas saying “we’ll need to update the ship date” basically accomplishes the same thing—without sounding as negative.

And in the same breath, we pivot straight into what we are willing/able to do.

In either case, you still need to speak up (that part is a must regardless), so this structure allows you to speak up while increasing the chances that your recipient receives the news well.

The last variation of this is you may want to “sell” your idea a bit.

For example:

"I won’t be able to join the committee ongoing, but I’m happy to do a 1:1 call and be a thought partner to discuss the high level strategy if you want to bounce ideas ad hoc. Getting to riff and talk out loud with someone who’s outside the committee and doesn’t have skin in the game might be even more helpful.”

“We won’t be able to implement all those feature suggestions, but I will review with the team and take into account what you shared. I think the underlying premise of improving our user experience makes a lot of sense. Thanks for bringing this up.”

"Pulling all the data across our systems would take 2 weeks, which our team doesn’t have bandwidth for and is probably too long for you to wait. But I can create a dashboard with the metrics from our primary system, which covers about 80% of what you need and can be done in 2 days.”

Here’s the text with color-coded annotations:

This script template might seem simple on the surface, but it leverages principles of influence and behavioral economics under the hood.

In this case, I’m stacking concepts such as:

• Loss aversion: Most people are more sensitive to loss than equivalent gains, so by minimizing what can’t be done, we’re reducing the perception of loss.

• Peak-end rule: We’re deliberately engineering the end of the message to focus on your recommended next steps (positive).

• Recency effect: The “can do” part will be remembered most clearly because it's the last thing your recipient heard, so it’s fresher in their memory.

• Inverted but technique: This one isn’t a behavioral economics principle, but it’s one of my frameworks. Notice how I put the positive part after the “but.” This is strategic and directs my recipient’s attention to what I want them to think about. More on how to use “but” strategically.

Remember:

First, the thing you give airtime to tends to grow in importance in people’s minds. This is why you should avoid incepting negative ideas. Ideas are fuzzy until you put them into words, either spoken or written. The longer you give it airtime, and the more you repeat it, the more real and concrete it becomes.

Second, if you want an idea to feel more real, you should talk about it more. Repeat it more than you think you have to. You want to socialize the message, talk about it in different ways, share examples, link it to other ideas people already know, etc. All of this airtime reinforces the idea and makes it more concrete.

Third, this gives you more agency to influence the conversation in the direction you want it to go. Instead of the other person defaulting to controlling the frame, and you being purely reactive, you take the reins and assert what to do instead.

What’s a recent interaction when you could have focused less on what you can’t do, and more on what you can do? How will you respond differently going forward?

Hit reply because I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next Wednesday at 8am ET.

Wes

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