"If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" is a warning for knowledge workers, disguised as a…

"If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" is a warning for knowledge workers, disguised as a children's book. The morale: saying 'yes' is costly.

In life, a request is rarely just one request. Each request sets off a cascade of followup, revisions, and new needs.

The cookie becomes a glass of milk,
then a straw,
a napkin,
a mirror,
a haircut,
etc.

If we're not careful, we're back where we started... or worse, the same place but having exhausted our most valuable resource: time.

Packaged together, we'd never agree to such obvious distractions upfront. But delivered drip by drip, we're lured into an unintentional side-quest with questionable value.

Of course, requests aren't all bad. They're part of how work gets done. But each task is usually more than we originally bargained for... so let's make sure it's worth it.