Say no to busy-ness!
How to get traction and avoid distraction
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
Before Covid-19, you might have spent a large portion of your day travelling to and from the office or meetings.
Isn’t it great, now you’ve got all this extra time? I bet you’re using it to learn to play the guitar or read Ulysses...
WHAT! Hold on a minute.
Let’s be honest, most of us are filling that time doing more of what we were doing already. Expanding into the available space, without necessarily being more effective.
Let’s stop that.
Let’s learn how to say no more often.
But before we do that, let’s explore what’s going on here.
My cupboard theory
If you have a thing, you’ll fill it. Be that a cupboard, a garage, a shelf, a handbag or storage on your phone. There is probably a philosopher somewhere who’s said this before me (please let me know!).
The trick is to fill the cupboard with useful things. The same applies to your working day. We need to be filling it with the right stuff. What we do becomes important here if we’re to be the most effective we can be. And who doesn’t want that?
This means saying no more than we do now.
One of the telltale signs of not saying no enough is the feeling of work overwhelm. When there’s just too much work. You go home (or leave your home work desk) with a sinking feeling - work is just getting too much. I’m sure we’ve all been there. I have definitely been there - which is why I’m writing this. I too want to learn some strategies for being more impactful and saying no more often. Or, to borrow a phrase - Take Back Control ;-)
I know this blog post isn’t perfect - I’m at the start of a journey to explore this further and this is me doing my thinking in the open. I’d love to hear what strategies you’ve found to help you stay focused - to work less hard, and be more effective. Please add in the comments, or get in touch.
Why we say yes too often
Before we dip into how to say no more effectively - let’s explore why it is that we find ourselves saying yes to more things than we might want? These are some common ones...
We want to be helpful and please others - I’m definitely guilty of this one. Perhaps it gives us a warm glow - a feeling of having helped out. But at what cost?
We don’t want to appear hard to work with - We want to show we’re pulling our weight in our team and are willing to bite off more than we can chew to prove that.
We don’t want to appear out of our depth - By saying yes, we might think we appear more capable.
Having worked with lots of people at all levels in all kinds of organisations, people often say that they’re too busy - on the rocky road to overwhelm.
Why we should say no
There is a proverb "If you want something done, ask a busy person" - this is said for a reason - and you don’t want to be this person. Your job list will never be DONE. Say yes too often and your to-do's will endlessly fill up until you're overwhelmed, heading for burn out. You don’t need me to tell you, this is bad for wellbeing. And what does it do to the quality of your work?
Saying no and being more focused will make you more successful in the long run. Here’s what Warren Buffett has to say on the matter:
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that the very successful people say no to almost everything”
Other people actually want to hear the truth from you and have clarity. It frees them to move onto the next opportunity. Answering with an "I'll try and do...", or delaying things gives people false hope and you'll be letting them down later on when it can't be done. It’s best to be upfront and honest sooner rather than later.
So, let’s get started. But before we get into how to say no more effectively, we need a good set of questions to figure out what impact the work we’re doing will have on things.
Understanding intentions
You may be knee deep in an existing project, wondering why you’re doing it, who it will benefit and wondering what success will look and feel like. Or you may be about to start the next thing.
In either case, you could try asking a few important questions:
Why are we doing this work? (What is our motivation?)
Who will this work impact on? (Who are our users?)
What do they need? (What problem will it solve for people and planet?)
What do we need as an organisation? (What problem will it solve for the organisation?)
How will we know if we’ve been successful? (How will we measure success?)
In complex projects, there is always more to be done. But you don’t have to save the world and everything in it!
Instead; focus. Be mindful of the dreaded scope creep.
On a more micro level, at the beginning of each day, you could try setting out your intentions for that day before you get sucked into the inbox of doom! Planning to set aside focused time for ‘deep work’ helps concentration and will make your work better and more efficient.
See the tools section at the end for some nifty tips on how to do this.
OK, so now the hard part. We’ve forecast that we simply don’t have capacity for the next 3 months to take on any more work. (using another one of those tools at the end)
Your boss or colleague now asks you to do x, y or z.
Six ways to say “no” well
Do it in person or via a video call
While this option might seem harder in the short term than writing a quick email, it’s worth it in the long run. I’m sure you can think of a time when you sent or received an email that was misinterpreted when read. Tone of voice is hard to distinguish in an email.
Deliver the message in a shit sandwich
This isn’t saying yes, when you really mean no. But:
starting with a positive (e.g., thanks for thinking of me for this task / project etc)
inserting the negative (e.g., I was planning on working on x, y, z over the next month. It’s important that I do this well because…)
ending with a positive (e.g., I’m happy to de-prioritise something else / recommend someone else / do it another time / I’d be very happy to help in the future when I’m less busy)
Support your no with “because…”
This is where having the data you’ve collected in Harvest / Forecast (or similar) might be useful. Being explicit about the context you’re working in stops the other person jumping to their own conclusions.
Offer an alternative (ditch your ego)
Though it may be flattering to think that you are the only person in the world who can do this task or project, it probably isn’t 100% true. Refer them to someone else instead, or offer to coach another colleague to do the work. Your colleague might be glad of the opportunity.
If there really is nobody else for the job
Ask for help prioritising your existing workload. Use positive language here too. E.g., “Yes, sure. I can help with that. Can you help me organise my workload priorities?”
Normalise ‘no’
The more you say it, the more normal it becomes. And soon enough, it becomes strangely enjoyable. You’ll start to own your day, rather than your day owning you.
Here’s a useful hack I’ve discovered:
Grab a piece of A4 paper (or digital equivalent).
Draw a line down the middle. Head up the two columns “Things I’ve said no to” and “Time saved”
Put it somewhere prominent - where you’ll notice it every day.
Now, every time you say no to something, big or small, make a note with an estimate of how much time you’ve saved. It doesn’t have to be scientific - an estimate will do!
Every time you add something new, it feels like you’ve just received a little gift of time. I’ve found this to be quite addictive and surprisingly successful. This tiny habit, that costs nothing, can begin to drastically change the way you work.
I’ve since added another column, “things I should have said no to”. These are areas I need to work on more. But I guess this is stage two.
Useful tools for the job
AKA saving time through tech.
Here are the things I’ve tried with some success. Each of these will take a bit of upfront time to set up and understand, so it might help to take baby steps. Try the one that most appeals first, and see how it goes!
Measure
Measure how you spend your time during the day. I use Harvest, which is very easy to use. There is a free version you can use via a browser, so no need to download any software unless you want to add lots of projects.
This is made easier if you work in short bursts - a bit like a Joe Wickes High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) session. Choose your timescales to suit and set your alarm for a period of work (I choose 25 mins) followed by a period of rest, when you can record what you just did (I choose 5 mins rest).
Look at what you’ve measured - find the activities and tasks that you don’t need in your life and delegate or automate them.
You could go one step further, and use something like Forecast by Harvest. Whereas Harvest tells you how you’ve spent your time in the past. Forecast estimates what you’re likely to do in the future. And how much capacity you have for more work. Useful to justify a “no” if you’re ever asked to squeeze ‘one more wafer thin mint’ into your already packed After Eights box!!
Say NO to distractions
Put social media in a sub folder on your phone, so you have to actively seek it out. It helps avoid those “what did I just pick my phone up for?” moments.
Pause your email inbox for some focused time each day. I use inboxpause.com from Boomerang.
Put ‘focused time’ in your calendar to do thinking work. This seems to be a specific new feature in premium Google Workspace Calendars, but there’s nothing to stop you creating an event in your calendar to do your core individual work - not all events have to be a meeting.
Automate
You can create your own automations using IFTTT (which literally means “IF This Then That”) - e.g., when I like something on Twitter, it pops up automatically in Evernote, which gives me a ready source of content for my newsletter. There are loads of ready made IFTTT recipes, and you don’t need to be a tech wizard to use it.
I use Otter.ai for transcribing important conversations - it’s easier, more accurate and less time consuming than making detailed notes. Currently, with the free version you can record up to 30 minutes of conversation at a time.
If you pay the bills, using things like Receiptbank and Xero with automatic bank feeds ensures that all the boring stuff gets dealt with easily without eating into your time.
Delegate
Do you really need to be making the slides for your presentation look nice? Can you ask someone with a better design eye to do that for you? They’ll do a better job in half the time and leave you free to work on something else.
What are the things you’re doing that someone else could be doing better and more quickly? Make a list (perhaps using your Harvest data) and delegate or eliminate them.
If you are a ‘Chief Everything Officer’ and don’t have someone to delegate to, you could consider turning to remote or online services from graphic designers, to accountancy specialists to admin support - there’s a surprising array of services available now.
We all start each day with the same amount of time - and it’s the only thing we can’t buy. So it’s important we’re careful with it. I hope these strategies will help me, and you, to be more mindful about what we do with it.
And by the way, I don’t yet do all these things perfectly. I keep falling off the wagon and relapsing into old habits. But I’m trying to stick with it and remember that each time I say no, I’m saying yes to another opportunity. Hopefully, something that might help me to take a deep dive into a specific area or project that interests me, develop skills and capability for myself or others, or have fun.
I haven’t covered anything here about the tricky balance for freelancers and small businesses between having too much work, and not enough. This isn’t a nut I’ve managed to crack and would love to hear if you have!
Being busy is not a proxy of our seriousness. Let’s take off our “I’m busy” badge and replace it with “I’m effective”.
Good luck trying out one or two of these things - please do share how you get on.
I’d love to hear from you too with your tips and hacks for working less hard, but better.
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