How to Say “No” So You Actually Get Work Done

In my previous blog, I talked about the importance of being able to hold boundaries to focus on high-value work and stay off the urgency flywheel of work that just feels like putting out fires. But, I recognize that the tyranny of the urgent is called a “tyranny” for a reason and that protecting your own time, priorities, focus, and highest-value work is really difficult to do.

The Foundations

So, I wanted to follow up that blog with 6 foundations that must be in place if you have any prayer of successfully facing off with tyranny.

1. Know what matters to you and to the business so that you evaluate your time against that knowledge rather than merely against what matters most to the person who just walked into your office or pinged you in chat. Their urgency is not necessarily yours.
2. Create clear and aligned goals and weekly priorities with your boss and your team. This must be in place to simplify #3 below.
3. Understand, evaluate, and communicate tradeoffs. If your boss comes to you with something urgent, you likely feel the need to jump right on it. But, you were also not likely sitting there twiddling your thumbs wondering what to do with your time. You had other priorities you were working on. So, make sure that before jumping to say “yes” you communicate “if I do this then this other thing will have to wait. Is that what you want?” Or, something to that effect.
4. Be willing to say “no” – or, at a minimum, ask if it can wait until later. When you are constantly interrupted, you can’t get into deep thought or a flow state. You are also less efficient and more likely to make mistakes. Most things your people bring to you could wait an hour or two. And, in my experience, they will solve it for themselves in that time if it was really that important.
5. Close your “door” and block your calendar. You must be willing to protect work time in the face of “react” time. The time you spend thinking about developing your team and delegating, improving your product or service so there are fewer problems, or investing in your strategy is critical time but on a longer time horizon. It’s also the exact work that can get you off the urgency flywheel today and keep you off over the long run.
6. Develop others and delegate. If someone else could be responding to this fire, why aren’t they? Your higher order work is to solve that question rather than continuing to solve their issues for them.

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