Just Say "No"

An important insight into time- and self-management by Seth Godin.

If you've got talent, people want more of you. They ask you for this or that or the other thing. They ask nicely. They will benefit from the insight you can give them.

The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying 'no' often.

You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can't bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.

Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

This is simply another more gentle way of saying that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. We all know it's true. If we are in a helping profession there are always lots of people who are clamoring for a piece of our time. How do we decide who to say yes to?

• The person with the loudest cry?
• The person with the most clout?
• The person who arrived first?
• The person with the greatest need?
• The person we are most likely able to help?

Too often we do dissipate our energies and gifts by thinking we should be able to help everyone. It's just not true and we will discover that we are far more effective when we are willing to admit that. The paradox then is that we will help, truly help, more people than we thought we would be able to.