Learn to say ‘no’

Although this tip is to help your productivity at work, it can be used in all aspects of your life.

When your schedule is full but you know you still have just enough time to accomplish everything if you hurry and concentrate, that’s when you receive this request that must be done now. Sounds familiar?

What to do? Say yes, work overtime, and complain in your head (or out loud!)? When it happens a second time, and a third…What do you do then? Complain more? Or even worse, accept and not accomplish the task in time?

How about saying ‘no’?

Bare with me, I’m not saying to stop doing what is asked of you and always refuse everything without thinking, especially if the request comes from a superior, but there is a right way to say no and here is how:

Compare priorities

First, requests, especially those that must be done ‘now’, may not be that urgent compare to other tasks. Therefore, it’s important to clarify when the request must be done and why it must be done for that time.

Most often, one of two scenarios will occur:

1. Your current task will be considered more urgent and it will be possible to compromise to have more time to do the request. Explaining that the ‘phone call tomorrow’ may be rescheduled for example but your project deadline cannot.
2. The request will be more urgent and you may consider doing your current task later instead.

Compare resource availability

If changing the task’s deadline cannot be considered, maybe somebody else can do it. The person with the request may just be looking for someone to have something done and will take the first ‘yes’.

Here, a possible solution could simply be to suggest asking others instead of adding the work to your already full schedule.

Suggest alternatives

Identifying the goal of the request can give you an idea for a quicker alternative which will make it possible for you to do it right away or buy some time.

For example, a request might be to create a full detailed schedule for a meeting. Here, if the goal is to identify approximately when the client will have to provide his content, then maybe just a milestone list can do the job.

Discussing alternative could also help you find ideas that other available resources may be able to do (refer to point above).

In conclusion

No matter what solution you use, the important thing to remember is to always propose an alternative or compromise and avoid bluntly saying ‘no’.

It will make your life easier, and your colleagues will respect you for this.