Fortune #43

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company offered so many products that customers and employees struggled to explain which computer was for whom. The problem was not that everyone was doing too little. The company's energy was divided among too many projects to make each one excellent. Jobs began by asking which products truly needed to exist.

He reduced the core line from more than a dozen offerings to four understandable categories: consumer or professional, desktop or portable. That choice meant stopping projects to which people had given serious effort. They were not necessarily worthless. Apple simply could not say yes to everything at once and still give the most important work its best resources.

Jobs later described focus as more than saying yes to the chosen goal; it also required saying no to many good ideas. Selection gave the organization one direction. Marketing could speak more clearly, engineers could concentrate on fewer products, and customers could understand their choices. Simplicity at the end was created by difficult decisions at the beginning.

If every request feels important today, write down only two or three commitments you can genuinely care for. Compare each new request with that list. A boundary can be both kind and clear: “I cannot add this now because I need to protect the work I already accepted.” It does not declare that the other person is unimportant. It gives your existing yes enough time and quality to remain a real promise.