154: The Hard No ❌

As I shared in last week’s solo episode, Free Time isn’t about time management or productivity, or even simply doing work more efficiently. It is about setting time free. 

If our time is trapped like a bird in a cage, unless we break free of shoulds and obligations, there it will remain. We achieve this through smarter systems, and that includes getting better at saying no. 

My own tendency to say yes — in an effort to be liked, to please others, to be accommodating, or even to continue trying to “do right” by my work in promoting it — leads to burnout and resentment when to many “yeses” create time confetti and tiredness. In this episode, I’m sharing strategies that I’ve picked up along the way for doing the very hard thing of disappointing others by saying no. 

🌟 Key Takeaways

• Do’s: Ask, “Is my focus done?”, create blanket rules, celebrate space, trust in timing and your own inner compass

• Don’ts: Punt something you don’t actually want to do to your future self, spend too many thinking cycles mulling a decision, beat yourself up, cave to FOMO

📝Permission

Treat indecision as the decision that it often is: no! Separate the guilt or shoulds you feel from what your intuition is saying to you. Would you initiate this request with joy, unprompted, or are you saying yes out of obligation? 

✅Do (or Delegate) This Next

Craft a graceful reply for a decision you’re facing, and don’t over-explain or defend your decision. Save your “graceful no” replies in the same place (I use Notion and TextExpander) so that you can return to them when facing the next tough no. 

📘Books Mentioned

• Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business 

• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One

• Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done by Jocelyn K. Glei

• Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu

🎧Related Episodes

• 152: Do Less — On Entropic Bloat and Business Haircuts

• 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin

• 052: Perceived Capacity vs. Actual Capacity

• 106: Splatology—On Clearing Time Clutter

• Pivot: 293: 🍝 Are you a Spaghetti-Twirler or a Spaghetti-Thrower?

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