Will it be worth it?

How to know if something’s worth doing. Or not. Especially when you don’t have a crystal ball handy.

As we get ever closer to another new year, I imagine you might be contemplating how you’ll spend your time and where you’ll put your focus over the next 12 months.

I am too, though after years and years of elaborate planning processes (plus a pandemic), I’ve learned to hold it all a little more loosely — think pencil, not permanent marker.

No matter what approach you take to the new year, at some point you’ll have some decisions to make about what’s worth keeping, what’s worth delegating, what’s worth adding and what’s worth deleting.

And those decisions can be trickier to make than they might first seem, as you weigh the pros and cons; the risks and rewards.

In the spirit of not adding more complexity to your decision-making process, here are five simple and effective filters you can use to help you ground yourself in whether something is worth doing.

Don’t overthink it (she says, knowing she always does) and trust the answers that rise to the top.

Choose the bigger life

When I first heard Gretchen Rubin speak these words on her podcast, I stopped what I was doing, paused the audio and wrote her quote into my notes app so I wouldn’t forget.

When in doubt or indecision, choose the bigger life.

Bigger doesn’t have to mean in scale and scope, but rather what would bring fulfillment and enrichment to YOUR life in a meaningful way.

You get to decide what bigger means.

And once you decide, choose it.

Fast forward six weeks

This is for my people pleasers who respond to requests, then consider them.

When we’re presented with an opportunity, a request or a decision, we often answer based on how we’re feeling in the moment and what we have capacity for now.

And then, weeks later, when the event comes around or the project needs to get started, or the committee is calling its fifth meeting in the past month, we start to kick ourselves for saying yes and not considering how we’d feel when it came time to do the thing.

When you’re considering if something’s worth it, pause and ask yourself if it would still be worth it in two weeks, in six weeks, or in six months.

If the answer is no, then it’s not worth it even if it feels good today.

Connect it to your values

Have you ever said yes to something, only to realize at some point down the road that you’re compromising yourself and your values in the process? That something feels off and out of alignment?

Ya, me too.

This happens when we make decide what’s worth doing based on external indicators and expectations, rather than internal instincts and information.

We might initially see bright and shiny, but if we act hastily, we might also miss the bright shiny red flag that’s also waving at us, warning us that we’re about to tread into territory that doesn’t match our personal code of conduct.

As you consider if something’s worth it, ask yourself if it lines up with what you hold as most important, or whether it would require you to compromise — even if in seemingly small ways.

Operating outside your values is usually a price you want to avoid paying.

Know what’s driving you

You’re asking yourself if this thing is worth doing, but have you stopped to ask yourself why you’re considering it in the first place?

It’s so easy to find yourself saying yes to something for the wrong reasons, only to realize later that your motivations were out of whack.

Get clear on why it’s on the table to begin with.

What are you seeking? What do you hope it will give you? What’s driving your consideration?

You may still say yes to the thing, but at least you’ll know you were clear on why you said yes in the first place.

Play the near-far game

I’m probably dating myself, but do you remember the segment in Sesame Street where Grover (my fave character) used to run for a close-up to the camera and yell “NEAR” and then run into the background and shout “FAR” over and over again?

Without tiring yourself out like Grover did, apply the same principles (with a twist) to that thing you’re contemplating.

Will it bring you closer (near) to your hopes, dreams and goals?

Or will it bring your farther away (far) from them?

Everything we engage our time, energy and effort in has an opportunity cost: if we do X, we might not have the capacity to do Y as well, so we want to be sure that X brings us closer to what matters most.

And while you can use any of these five strategies to help you discern whether the opportunity in front of you is worth doing, the truth is that you’ll never really know until you try.

Sometimes you’ll have enough information or instinct to resist the urge to try in the first place. You’ll know, hopefully after putting it through any of the five filters above, that this isn’t the opportunity for you, right now.

But other times you’ll have to take a leap of faith in order to find out.

And the good news is that every leap offers learning, and very few are forever.