Authored by guest blogger: Audrea Laffely
This post is about a resolutions, particularly my 2015 new years’ resolution. This year like many others on January 2nd, I made my resolution for the year. Years past it had been about saving money or working out more or even becoming a vegetarian (Note to all of you, this didn’t last). But this year was different, this year I decided my resolution was to work less and start saying no.
In order to understand the magnitude of this resolution, I need to start by saying, “My name is Audrea and I am a work-alcoholic”. I will always put in the extra hours, always pick up extra work and always say yes when asked to do a task. I mean really who wants to be the person that says “no”. What if by saying “no” you will no longer be asked? What if by saying “no” people will think you can’t do the work? What if you say “no” and people stop coming to you as a resource? What is it about saying NO that scares us so much?
It’s scary to say no because we as people (and especially as women) want to please. We want to seem irreplaceable and like we can do anything. But at the end of the day we do no one any favors by being stretched too thin. Taking everything on and not doing everything to the fullest means you are not doing everything the best that you can. In the end, the poor quality of your work on five things will look a lot worse than saying no to one thing and doing a great job on four things.
Over the past two months I’ve been working on a few solutions to help me feel better about saying “no” and still getting the job done. They are as follows:
- Setting and sticking to my boundaries – I have decided that I will only work up to 50 hours a week and if I can’t fit something else in during that time, then I will say no. Obviously there are exceptions but I’m trying to stick to this.
- Delegating: Just because something has to get done, doesn’t mean you have to do it. Daily, I sit down with my to-do list and figure out who I can delegate to do certain items on the list. This gives more room for the things I want to say yes to.
- Managing the deadlines: If I want to say yes to an opportunity, then I need figure out where I can fit it in before committing. If I can’t get it done this week, then I just need to set the expectation that I would love to do it but it can’t be until so and so day OR I need to delegate out something in my current to-do list. It’s all about boundaries.
To wrap up this post, I want to share a great quote from Steve Jobs – “It’s only by saying “no” that you can concentrate on the things that are really important”. Remember, It’s okay to say “no” to things, in order to say “yes” to other things.
http://depsicologia.com/miedo-a-decir-no/
