Say yes to the invite you’d regret missing. Say no to the one you’d regret going to.

Two different regrets exist and they pull opposite ways, which is why one blanket rule about saying yes never works. Some things you will mind having missed for years: a friend’s only performance, a grandparent’s birthday, the trip the group never managed to arrange again. Others you regret before you have even got home. Telling them apart is the entire skill.

Hold each invitation against that question rather than against how you feel on the night, since tiredness says no to everything. Where it happens once, go. Where it is the evening you already did not enjoy, decline cleanly and without a story.