There’s a version of me, earlier in my career, that I look back on with equal parts affection and mild horror.
Senior PMM. Ambitious. Energetic. Completely convinced that the path to being seen as a top performer was to say yes to everything, finish everything, and never… ever… let anything drop. I was the person who came to the office early, finished late, picked up the extra ask, took the “quick” request that always turned out to be not-so-quick. I wore the busyness like a badge.
I thought I was building a reputation as someone who delivers. I was actually building a reputation as someone who’s tired.
What I Didn’t See
Here’s the thing about PMM that makes this trap so easy to fall into: we are, by nature, people who want to connect, collaborate, and serve. We sit at the connective tissue between Product, Sales, and Marketing. Everyone needs something from us. And for a lot of us, especially early in our careers, being needed feels good.
So we say yes. And yes again. And “sure, I can take a look at that.” And “of course, send it over.”
What we don’t see in the moment is the math. Every yes is a unit of capacity. And capacity is finite. When you say yes to five things and you only have bandwidth for three, you don’t magically find extra hours. You spread yourself thinner. The quality drops. The delivery dates start slipping. And the work that should be great … becomes good … then OK … and then … not.
Doing “good” is not why you got into this.
The Conversation I Am Forever Grateful For
My manager at the time sat me down one afternoon and said some things I have never forgotten.
“You’re tired. You’re missing delivery dates. And the quality has dropped off.”
I reacted, the way you do when you’re defensive and a little embarrassed. I explained my intent. I told her how much I had on my plate, how I was trying to do right by everyone, how I was putting in the hours.
She listened. And then she said two things that I’ve been turning over ever since.
The first: “You’re better to deliver 3 things awesome than 5 things average.”
Simple. Obvious, even. And yet I had never actually applied it to myself.
The second: “The business responds to pain, not pleasure.”
What she meant was, by saying yes to everything, I had created an invisible problem… for myself. Because nothing was being said no to, there was no visible evidence of a capacity gap. No dropped balls, no missed deadlines that couldn’t be explained away, no moment where a stakeholder had to go without. I was stretching to cover it all, and from the outside, it looked like I was covering it all.
Which meant there was no business case for more resources, no urgency to add capacity, and no reason to look at the team and say “we need more.”
When you say yes to everything, you’re telling the organization: “I got this.”
You don’t got this.
The Power of The Z Axis
In most prioritization conversations, people think in two dimensions: the what and the why. What are we doing, and why does it matter? X and Y. Fair enough, that’s table stakes.
But there’s a third axis that we forget to invoke: the when. The Z axis.
The Z axis is where everything actually gets decided.
“Yes, but when?” is not a negotiation tactic.
It’s a clarifying question that forces a real conversation about trade-offs. It says: I hear you, I want to do this, and I need you to help me understand where it lives relative to everything else I’m holding.
That’s not “no.” It’s not a refusal. It’s not you being difficult or precious about your time. It’s you doing your job well, which includes being honest about what great delivery actually requires.
The full version of “yes, but” sounds something like: “Yes, I can take that on. To do it well, I’d need to push back the launch brief by a week, or drop the battlecard refresh to next cycle. Which one would you rather trade?”
Now the stakeholder is in the conversation with you. Now there’s a real decision being made, not just a task being handed off and silently degraded.
What This Does
Here’s the part that surprises people: saying “yes, but…” doesn’t make you look weaker. It makes you look like someone who understands the work. Leaders understand “yes, but”, they do it every day, so when a team member does it, that gets noticed.
It signals that you know what quality takes. That you’re thinking about delivery, not just intake. That you’re managing a function, not just a to-do list.
And here’s the resource angle, which my manager handed me and I’ll hand to you: when you’re honest about trade-offs, you create the visibility the business needs to understand your actual capacity. Suddenly there are real decisions being made, not just assumptions that you’ll absorb the load. Suddenly someone above you can see, concretely, what “more work” actually means.
That’s how you build a case for resources. That’s how you stop being the person who handles everything and start being the person who leads a function.
The Z axis isn’t just a prioritization tool, it’s a career statement.
I would not and have not advocate for saying no as a default. Anyone who reflexively protects their time without judgment become a bottleneck, not a partner. The goal isn’t to be less helpful. The goal is to be helpful in a way that’s actually sustainable and actually high quality.
“Yes, but…” starts the conversation and begins the game, you’re just playing by the rules :)
On Reflection
I think about that conversation with my manager more than she probably realizes. She handed me a reframe I’ve used hundreds of times since… not just in PMM, but in how I think about work generally.
Three things awesome beats five things average. Every time.
And the business? It responds to pain, not pleasure. So stop hiding yours.
Adam
I wrote about this from a more personal perspective over on thesafe.place