A 30-Day Yes Rule for Friend Invitations, Borrowed From Two Yes Experiments

A workable yes rule for everyday life is narrow: for 30 days, say yes to the next invitation a friend sends you, one at a time, with two exceptions. You skip the yes when it would cost money you cannot spare or put you at risk, and when it collides with a commitment you already made. Two famous experiments explain why the rule is worth trying.

What did Danny Wallace and Shonda Rhimes actually do?

Danny Wallace, a British radio producer, was told by a stranger on a bus to “say yes more.” He took that as an order and turned it into a memoir, Yes Man (2005), about accepting the offers, invitations and dares that came his way. The 2008 Jim Carrey film is a loose adaptation, so the film’s rules are not his. Sources disagree on whether the stretch lasted six months or a year, so treat the length as approximate.

Shonda Rhimes’s story starts at Thanksgiving 2013. She was describing the pile of invitations reaching her office when her sister said, “You never say yes to anything.” That line stuck. She spent the following year saying yes to things that scared her, and wrote Year of Yes (2015). Notice that her rule was not “everything.” It was “the frightening things,” which is already a narrower rule than the title suggests.

Why not just copy them?

Both projects became books. Saying yes to literally everything takes an understanding employer and a tolerance for chaos, and most calendars have neither.

The friend-only version keeps the useful part. Adult friendships, as the ranking of things to do with friends by planning effort shows, tend to stall at the planning stage, so an invitation that arrives fully formed is a small gift.

What are the two exceptions?

1. Money or safety. If saying yes means a bill you would resent or a situation you would not put a friend in, the rule does not apply.
2. A prior commitment. Yes to one thing cannot mean no to something you already promised.

Everything else gets a yes, including the mildly boring invitation. Reaching out is easier than people expect, as the surprise of contacting an old friend reports.

Where does the rule actually break?

Not at the yes. Saying yes takes two seconds and feels generous. The rule breaks the morning of, when a 7 a.m. hike or a Saturday brunch meets a body that would like to keep sleeping.

That is why the rule needs a second half: yes, and then arrive on time. Lateness carries a reputation cost of its own, which the piece on the identity cost of chronic lateness traces.

An early-morning invitation is where an alarm app earns a small role. DontSnooze makes you record a video within 30 seconds of the alarm, or a random camera-roll photo goes to friends you picked (the explainer has the details). It proves you are awake. It does not get you to the trailhead, and it does nothing about the hike being a bad idea.

The invitation is the easy part. Being there is the experiment.