I can barely recall a time in my life where saying 'no' to an exploding offer resulted in regret.
I'm not sure when I learned this 'power'. I don't think it should be a power, but I know way too many people who don't have it, and watched a number of them go through a bunch of bad excitement followed by regret.
If it's not someone including you in a spontaneous social activity at the last minute, just say no. They know that if you have time to think about it you'd realize it wasn't that great, which is exactly why they aren't giving you time to think about it. It's an attempt to evoke the same feeling of scarcity you experience when your buddy says, "Hey there are only three beers left. Who wants one?" to a room full of people.
I am one of those people who struggle to say no. Just this year, I consciously started saying "no" to people more frequently because I was getting overstretched with commitments and knew I needed to stop.
So far I have never regretted saying "no" to something (even though I suspected I might regret it at the time). But I have frequently regretted saying "yes" to something.
By saying no to more things, it allows you to have more time to do a good job at the few things you say "yes" to. Plus there is a power in taking your life by the reins and not letting other people dictate what you do because you blanket accept everything they request of you.
Exploding offers... yeah. They come as "limited time offers" all the time. "Deal of a lifetime", even. It's amazing - once in a lifetime offers come every six months.
Just because someone says it's a once in a lifetime offer, it's still the exact same offer. The words "once in a lifetime" do not change the offer whatsoever. If the answer is no, it shouldn't become yes just because someone says "once in a lifetime".
Sometimes exploding offers are exploitative. Sometimes they are simply “You are plan A, and we are going with plan B if you say no. Plan B is not an evergreen option for us, so we have to put a time limit on our offer to you.”
Seems it should often be possible to tell if the deadline is real or artificial. Perhaps by asking a question or two, but if it's something like "we're planning to start a major new project soon and we want the new head (i.e. you) to be there at the start", that seems likely to have come up early in the discussion of "what would I be working on".
Also, the larger the company, and the less specialized the role, the higher is the likelihood that "if you're above their competency threshold, then there's some team somewhere that needs more people even if they hire someone else for this role".
I'm not sure when I learned this 'power'. I don't think it should be a power, but I know way too many people who don't have it, and watched a number of them go through a bunch of bad excitement followed by regret.
If it's not someone including you in a spontaneous social activity at the last minute, just say no. They know that if you have time to think about it you'd realize it wasn't that great, which is exactly why they aren't giving you time to think about it. It's an attempt to evoke the same feeling of scarcity you experience when your buddy says, "Hey there are only three beers left. Who wants one?" to a room full of people.