Dominica DeGrandis

It's time for us to have a talk about the no word. Shall we?

Because if we're just saying yes all the time, then we get overloaded, and we don't get to finish our most important work.

My husband came up with the idea that I should get this hat, and I thought, "Oh, that's cool." And then I started thinking, you know what? I think he just wants to borrow it when I start making these lists. Then he doesn't have to say, "No, honey." He can just point to the hat because no is uncomfortable.

But saying no doesn't make you an arse. Sometimes it's the right thing to do. But no is a learned skill. So we're going to take seven common scenarios so you can practice, you can exercise your no muscle. Are you ready?

Number seven: your colleague is having a problem with the printer. Your response? "I can't do it right now. Open the printer and read the directions."

If you allow yourself to be pegged as the printer fixer, you're going to get interrupted all the time. The main takeaway here is don't assume that what your colleague is doing is more important than the work that you're going to do.

Number six: major contributor leaves, and the boss wants you to cover their workload. Your response? "I'm so honored that you would think so highly of me to take this on, but I'm going to have to get back to you."

Stalling tactics. If you can, just try and stall things to the most irresponsible moment, okay?

Number five: boss man really wants your help to finish Project Sally. And it can be hard to say no to the boss, especially when they make you an offer you can't refuse. But be very careful with this because given time, you might realize you don't want to be involved with Project Sally. Maybe you have other priorities that you need to get to. So if you hedge a no, you can buy some time back with that.

Number four: "Got a minute?" your colleague asks you. Your response? Yeah. "Sorry, mate, nothing takes just a minute, and I'm in the middle of something right now."

So just remember that delaying things to later in the day allows you to get your very most important work done in the morning. Maybe they'll still be around by the time you leave at the end of the day, and you can help them then.

Number three: your colleague notices that you're going out for lunch and asks you, while you're out, if you could pick them up some aspirin and some black socks. Your response? No.

I know. I thought because it was England and you're all so polite over here, you might say, "Beg your pardon?" But in some cases, it's just best not to elaborate because no is actually a complete sentence.

Number two: your American friend is coming to visit London for a week and thinks that you have a lot of time to spend with them. Your response? "Oh, love, I would just simply love to see you, but it's just impossibly busy that week."

You can have many top priorities, but you can only have one top priority. Because we can really only do one thing at a time.

Number one: "Can you cover the Slough meeting for me? I'll owe you one." So this one, consider because you could do a trade-off. You could say something like, "Okay. I'll take you up on that if you can cover the Swindon meeting for me."

Keep in mind that the single most important factor when it comes to how long things take is how loaded you are. And I'm talking about flow load here, not alcohol.

So I just encourage you to have a think about what Warren is saying here. It's absolutely okay for you to tell somebody no if they're asking you to do something that's not in line with your goals. It's okay to say no. No is an honorable response to that.

Because in order for you to get the work of your life done, you have to make time with it. You have to say no to things because a decision to do one thing is a decision to delay something else. So liberate yourself and figure out what are you going to say yes to and what are you going to say no to.

Thank you.