Deep Dive Series: The Power of No Using the 0-10 Rule
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
Jay Shetty’s October 3, 2025, episode was an interview in which he participated. An audience member asked how he handles being a people pleaser and avoiding exhaustion. Jay has a heart for service, and he used to say yes to every request. You want to talk about something that just happened to you at midnight, I’ll answer the phone. You need help, I’ll drop what I’m doing and be there. But that practice quickly leads to burnout. So, he said he now uses the 0-10 Rule.
In the moment, every situation that arises in life feels like an emergency. Everything feels like a 10 when you don’t consider the scale of what 0-10 actually means. Ten on the scale is the worst thing that could ever happen to you - whatever that is for you personally. You get to decide. Zero is the best day ever. The scale helps you zoom out and really analyze what is and is not an emergency. A stubbed toe in the moment seems like a 10 out of 10. But if you zoom out and analyze the situation, realizing you’ve stubbed your toe many times in your life and the pain recedes after a couple of seconds, it’s actually a 2 out of 10. I can’t tell you how many times I used to come out of meetings at my corporate job and have twenty new unread emails and my body immediately freaked out as if it was an emergency. It felt like a 10 out of 10 situation as soon as I saw all those emails. But if I rationally looked at it, I could reflect on my experiences in the past that reminded me I would probably be able to read through and decide what to do with those emails in about ten minutes, and those twenty emails would be dealt with. So what felt like a 10 out of 10 was probably a 1.5 out of 10.
Jay said that using his scale, if a seemingly urgent request comes in, and he decides it’s an 8 or above according to his scale, he’s going to say yes. If he decides it’s a 7 or below, he’s going to say no. It gives him a metric to decide. Perhaps your own 0-10 scale could help you say no more as well.
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Sincerely Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team