One of the most common non-obvious pieces of advice is just to say “no” to almost everything. Unlike a large portion of commonly repeated advice, this one happens to be on point.
The core reason why saying “no” is so important is when something is going to destroy focus. To do good work, you need to focus, and you can’t focus if you’re doing 11 thousand things simultaneously.
Your boss or client knows this. Yet, despite knowing this, they give you more and more to do. It’s almost as if the boss wants you to fail. Most likely the boss doesn’t want you to fail (unless they were pressured into hiring you but that’s unlikely), but more likely it’s a combination of them both not being able to control themselves, and them expecting you—both as a good professional and as an adult—to be able to both push back when needed and to manage (aka, juggle) what you’re doing to get everything that’s needed to be done.
But here’s the part that all the “say no” advocates don’t talk about: in a power relationship, like you with your boss, it’s really hard to say no back. It’s easy for someone higher on the hierarchy to say no to someone lower on the hierarchy, but not in reverse.
And to say “no” easily and strongly requires deep confidence in yourself and deep confidence in your work.
So, how do you say “no” to your boss or client? A few tips:
First, the challenge begins with knowing when to say no. If you push back on every little thing, you’ll actually have no work to do. So why are you even hired! Plus, who wants to hire or work with the asshole who, no matter how smart his reasons or justifications, just finds an excuse not to do every little thing? Not me and doing so is indistinguishable from a deep laziness characteristic of people you would never want to work with.
The rule of thumb I would follow is that the more important it is, the more careful you should be about saying yes; and the more time-consuming it is, you should also be more careful about saying yes. So just judge each item in proportion to these two variables. In other words, if your client asks you to do something that is both quick and not that important, then there’s no reason to not just do it. But if it will take you a long time, or it is very important, then think long and hard about it.
Secondly, for anything that is important or time-consuming that you want to push back on and say no, write a document about it. (At this point, you’re probably not surprised to hear that recommendation! When in doubt, about anything, just sit down and write up what you’re thinking!) From the eyes of your boss or client, compare:
Boss: “Hey, can you do this thing that in the imagination of my mind is deeply important?”
You: “No, sorry, it will never work, won’t achieve your goals, and is a lame idea, plus I’m busy.”
Compare that to:
Boss: “Hey, can you do this thing that in the imagination of my mind is deeply important?”
You: “Let me think about it” [Goes away and returns two days later] “Here’s a 3-page analysis I did on why I don’t think this strategy makes sense, and some alternatives I think we should consider instead.”
The power of writing it down gives you a magic weapon with which you can say no, because it shows, unequivocally, that you have put thought and analysis into it.
The third way to say no is to talk about time trade-offs and prioritization trade-offs. Bosses will assume you have unlimited time and happily work 24 hours per day. But if you frame any request as, “I have so much to do, if I take this on, I’ll have to push back something else. What do you recommend I pause doing?” that reframes the conversation from the assumption of unlimited time, to making him do real-world trade-offs. Note that because these conversations are so common, if you already have a list, you’re keeping of what you’re working on, you can just present him with that list and together you can work on prioritizing. What happens most of the time is he actually doesn’t want you to stop prioritizing anything, but just waste less time. By confronting him with the prioritization trade-off, you force him to tell you that you should stop doing something else he wants you to do, or to tell you directly that he thinks you’re wasting too much time. And either of these outcomes are good, the latter being good because it brings his frustration out into the open, which is key. After all, the easiest way to make sure your boss does not love working with you is if frustrations keep building up but never surface.
But doing all of these is hard because our instinct is to say yes. And that’s why the secret here isn’t the above strategies, but the training and practice you need to make them second nature.
