Time Management Mistake Number Two – You don’t say No!
In my last post I wrote about Time Management Mistake Number One – You don’t know where your time goes. By mapping your time over the course of a week you will have a much better sense of why you feel so busy and what changes you can make to lose the never-ending sense of busy’ness.
And in mapping your time, you may also have the stark realisation that you are a ‘Yes’ person.Â
If you find it hard to say No – if you are forever saying Yes – to all the requests that come your way, then two things will happen:
- You will run out of time; and
- The requests will keep coming because you are the go to person who always says yes and who always delivers.
Regardless of why you are a Yes person (a wish to please; to be liked; the burst of pride at being the go to person…?), your mapped time may reveal to you that you are far too regularly saying yes to the multitude of requests that come your way. This in itself is OK if all of these requests happen to coincide with things you do want to do. But that’s unlikely.
If you want to manage your time smarter, be aware of your predilection to say Yes. Start differentiating between the requests you really want to say yes to and those which you don’t want to do or which are just not the best use of your time. Arm yourself with some simple strategies on how to say No.
And remember that every time you say Yes to someone else you are saying No to yourself.
Next post: Time Management Mistake Number Three….
