How to start saying “no” to things to get your time back?

Productivity

In the previous article, I’ve started the story about “I don’t have time” excuse. I got inspired by a structure that we can make around this excuse, and how many areas of our live it might influence, making us thoughtless and unhappy at the end of the day. In this article, we are going to get on the record one of the most difficult and important things there are regarding getting our time back – saying “no” to things.

It’s crucial for us, as people, employees, partners, parents or friends to set healthy boundaries, with a good intention to ourselves and the world that is around us. Might seems easy, but believe me that a lot of people are struggling with this every single day.

Do you want to know how to do it and don’t feel guilty?

How saying “no” to things at work can help?

It is a natural instinct that tells us to stay in the group at work, it has its roots in history and biology and it comes from our need to survive and not be eaten by a tiger.

So we stick together, and when somebody is asking us for supporting them in their tasks, or give us a task to cover that is totally crushing our plan for the day (especially if this person is our manager or somebody even higher in the hierarchy), we stop doing what we were doing, and jump right into the new assignment.

Sounds familiar?

We just want other people to like us, we want to be seen as reliable, helpful individuals, and it’s natural. But with what cost? The cost is being behind with our own tasks or projects, working extra hours to fill everything out, feeling frustrated that another day brought the same scenario – we planned everything, and it ended like always. Ruined. I’m not surprised when people who I teach about making a structure around their day to focus their energy on the right things, are saying to me: “Alex, it’s not working for me. I can plan my day, but then my manager/board member/colleague from my team comes to me and give me something that is urgent and what needs to be done ASAP”. And they agree to do it. Because they don’t want to be seen as lazy, not supportive, selfish, inflexible.

Setting boundaries at work is a real skill and its goal is to protect our time from other people who wants to get their job done, using our skills, readiness to help and ability to do things efficiently and effectively.

If somebody comes to you or sends you something that requires an investment of your time and focus (even if it’s just 5 minutes), take a step back before you dive into doing it. Ask yourself: “Is it my job to do it? Is it that important for the organization that I should resign from what I do and do this instead? Is it that urgent that I should do it now?”. You can use your own examples, but remember to always stay in OK-OK position, with a good intention.

What people are most afraid of is if they start setting the boundaries and protect themselves, other people will stop liking them, or coming to them when they need help. It’s not true. Keeping the good intention, clear communication about the division of responsibilities and clear timeline is a main key to avoid conflicts, misunderstanding and to build equality in treating each other’s time and skills.

How saying “no” to things at home can help?

It’s different from country to country, from culture to culture how we are functioning at our homes. In some cultures, with more patriarchal touch, traditional, conservative way of living is when women are staying at home, raising children and taking care of everything what’s connected to the “house”, without ever saying “no” to anything. They also take care of older members of the family, while men are supposed to earn money and bring it to them. Nowadays it’s changing, but – taking as an example Poland, my country of birth and living at the moment, the beliefs and convictions about the “classical” roles of men and women in the society are really deeply rooted.

And based on that, we often have beliefs and convictions in our heads about what we SHOULD do or who SHOULD we be in a certain context. It is connected to the conservative and post conservative thinking mindset, but even if we are in post conservative stage, we often have strong second thoughts about how we should set boundaries at our homes. And statistically, more of those tasks are on the women’s shoulders, so we have more troubles with saying “no” to things, not agreeing to do something what should be “natural” to us.

But it’s not about what we SHOULD do. It’s about what we want to do, and what we want to share with others, as we live together, and maybe what to withdraw completely to not thinking about it and focus on that really matter to us.

Make a list of things that you do at home at the moment. It can be connected to the cleaning, cooking, shopping for groceries, taking care of pets or kids. You name it, it’s your list. Ask people in your house to do the same things, include the children if you want. If you live alone, do it as well. Then, underline those things that are crucial to you, that are the closest to your heart and you would never let them go. See what is left on the list. Decide what to do with those items – how to share responsibilities with other people in your house or maybe take someone from the outside to help, if you can afford it? What I’m sure you cannot afford is to do everything on your own and not ask for support.

I know asking for help for some of us is one of the most difficult things to do, since a lot of us think that when we do it, we seem weak, that we cannot manage everything perfectly on our own. No matter what the cost is and how exhausted we are. But in my point of view, NOT ASKING is a weakness, jamming emotions and frustrations is a weakness, pretending that everything is fine is a weakness. And all this has an influence on people around us as well – think about it next time when you will want to say that you don’t need any help, or say “yes” to another thing, instead of saying “no” to protect your time.

How saying “no” to things in relations with other people can help?

There is a construct in Transactional Analysis called “drivers”.

Drivers in this context are internal injunctions, orders that work in such a way that we feel an internal compulsion or powerlessness to stop doing something, for example being nice to other people no matter what. Those convictions were made in our brains mostly until the age of six, based on what we have heard mostly from our parents or other people who raised us, unconsciously building our view of ourselves and the world that is around us. If a girl heard that she needs to be nice, quiet and to smile to other people, she will probably do it in her adult live and saying “no” to other people will be hard for her. If a boy heard that he needs to be tough and not cry like a girl, he will probably have a belief in his adult life that the tears are signs of weakness and will despise people who show such reactions. That’s how the convictions are born.

There are 5 drivers in TA, but in this article one of them is particularly useful, so we are going to focus on that.

“Please People” as a driver is there when you please others without asking if they actually need it, using intuition to guess other peoples’ needs. “People Pleasers” will avoid hurting others, that’s why they won’t say directly that they disagree with something, unwillingly undermine different ideas or orders they get. They put the needs of others over their own – that’s why other people think that they are always there for them, no matter what. They are seen as great team members because they are super helpful, always ready to support the team, even if they need to stay late, over and over again.

Saying “no” for those who has strong “Please People” driver inside of them is really hard because they live to help others. But that way – they are mostly tired, frustrated, burned out and sometimes depressed, since they don’t see in themselves any value, they are never enough in their eyes. If it’s your case, take into consideration that you are enough, and your needs are equally important compared to other people. You need to take care of yourself first, before starting taking care of others – only that way it can work.

Choose one thing you are going to say “no” to today in the context of other people. Remember about a good intention, a need of protecting yourself and repeat to yourself that it’s not selfish. It’s selfcare. Say calmly that you are hearing that something is important for this person, but you just don’t have a capacity to take care of that. Ask “how we can divide this between us to complete it together?”, instead of agreeing to take care of the whole thing. For a lot of people, it’ll be a groundbreaking event. Try it. See how you feel. Do it one more time tomorrow.

The bottom line

Saying “no” to things, to other people or to comfortable habits might seem impossible at the very beginning. But if we want to be better, make smarter decisions, live better lives, we need to do what’s uncomfortable, to challenge status quo. If you want it, ask yourself “why am I not saying ‘no’ to the things that I really don’t want to do?” It’s always a good start to make a real change, without feeling guilty.

Shall we?

Udostępnij

Komentarze

0 0 votes

Article Rating

0 komentarzy

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Czytaj także

Leadership

The Number One Struggle of New Tech Leaders (And How to Navigate It)

You’ve just been promoted. The title changed from Senior Developer to Engineering Manager, from Tech Lead to Director of Technology. Congratulations—you’ve worked hard for this moment. But then reality hits. Your inbox explodes. Slack messages pile up faster than you can read them. You’re pulled into meeting after meeting. Your calendar looks like a game of Tetris gone wrong. And that code you used to write? That deep work you loved? It’s now squeezed into whatever gaps remain between 1:1s, stand-ups, stakeholder updates, and strategic planning sessions. Welcome to the number one struggle every brand-new leader in technology faces: Communication overload. The Hidden Cost of Being “Always On” Here’s what nobody tells you when you step into leadership: Your job has fundamentally transformed from creating solutions to constant communication. And the data confirms this shift is real—and overwhelming. According to Grammarly’s 2024 State of Business Communication Report, developed with The Harris Poll, knowledge workers now spend 88% of their workweek communicating. For new tech leaders juggling team management, cross-functional collaboration, and strategic initiatives, that percentage often exceeds 100% of a standard work week. The report reveals something even more alarming: in the past 12 months, 78% of professionals saw increases in communication frequency, while 73% are using more communication channels than ever before. For HR teams and large organizations—exactly where many new tech leaders find themselves—many report spending over 40 hours weekly on communication alone. Think about that for a moment. Communication isn’t just part of the job anymore. Communication is the job. Why New Tech Leaders Feel it Most Intensely? As someone who works with hundreds of tech leaders each year through workshops and one-on-one mentoring, I see this pattern repeatedly. New leaders get caught in what I call the “triple communication trap”: You haven’t let go of your Individual Contributor identity. You were promoted because you were exceptional at solving technical problems. Your brain is wired to think in code, systems, and architecture. But now, your value comes from enabling others to do that work. This identity shift is brutal, and most new leaders try to do both—leading AND coding—which doubles their communication load while halving their effectiveness at each. You lack Communication Intelligence (CQ). We invest heavily in developing technical skills—learning new frameworks, mastering cloud architectures, and understanding AI/ML pipelines. But communication? We assume it’s intuitive. It’s not. Just as you wouldn’t expect someone to write production-ready code without training, you can’t expect leaders to navigate complex human dynamics without developing their Communication Intelligence. As I explored in the article on Communication Debt, many organizations suffer from a severe lack of investment in communication processes. New leaders inherit this debt without realizing it, then struggle to understand why their teams seem disengaged or why projects constantly fail due to “miscommunication.” You’re drowning in channels without a strategy. Email. Slack. Teams. Zoom. Jira. Confluence. GitHub comments. The average tech leader toggles between 8-10 communication platforms daily. Research shows that 55% of professionals say the constant flow of notifications across channels makes it hard to concentrate on important tasks, and 47% feel unsure about selecting the right channel to communicate information. Without a clear communication strategy, new leaders respond reactively to whatever channel screams loudest, creating a perpetual state of context-switching that destroys productivity and cognitive capacity. The Real Price We Pay The communication crisis in tech leadership isn’t just about feeling busy. It has a measurable business impact. Grammarly’s research found that poor communication costs businesses $1.2 trillion annually through lost productivity, elevated turnover, and customer churn. For a single organization, business leaders estimate teams lose 7.47 hours weekly to poor communication, equating to $12,506 per employee yearly. But here’s what hits new leaders hardest: This isn’t about others failing to communicate well. It’s about you learning to communicate strategically as a leader. And nobody taught you how. The consequences compound quickly: Your team becomes disengaged because they’re unclear about priorities and expectations Projects slip because cross-functional alignment fails Top performers leave citing a lack of clarity and direction You burn out trying to be everywhere, for everyone, all the time According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2024 Report, only one in three employees is engaged at work, and burnout continues to rise. New leaders, trying to prove themselves while learning their role, often push themselves beyond sustainable limits. Two Strategies to Navigate Communication Overload After working with tech leaders across organizations ranging from startups to global enterprises, I’ve identified four core strategies that make the difference between drowning and thriving. #1 Contract and Re-Contract Constantly Most new leaders assume their team knows what’s expected. They don’t. The contract you think you have—about goals, responsibilities, communication norms—exists only in your head. I teach leaders to avoid the toxic questions “Do you have any questions?” and “Is everything clear?” These prompts trigger social pressure to say “yes” even when confusion reigns. Instead, try: “I want to check if I explained this clearly. Can you describe back to me how you understood this?” This simple shift transforms an assumption into confirmation. Do this weekly with your team. When circumstances change (and in tech, they always do), re-contract explicitly rather than making unilateral announcements. #2 Develop Your Communication Intelligence (CQ) Just as you learned technical skills through deliberate practice, you must develop CQ intentionally. This means: Understanding that different people need information delivered in different ways Learning to read behavioral cues that signal misunderstanding or disengagement Recognizing your own communication preferences and consciously stretching beyond them Investing 10-15 seconds at the start of each interaction to observe how the other person communicates, then tailoring your approach Most communication is tailored to ourselves, not to others. We like detailed written documentation, so we send 10-page specs. We prefer face-to-face conversation, so we schedule yet another meeting. Strategic leaders adapt their communication to what works for their audience, not what’s comfortable for them. One CEO I worked with replaced weekly status meetings with short “mission huddles” focused on priorities and

Czytaj dalej

25 January 2026 No Comments

Leadership

Do You Want More Visibility as a Leader? Here’s How to Do It.

To have a greater impact as leaders, we need to be more visible. I know that you would prefer the scenario: “Who needs to know, they know” or “Our product is going to speak for itself”, but the truth is that getting people know about what you do is something that’s not just happening. We need to speak up about our ideas, about what we’ve done, what we’ve designed, what we want to change, or what we’ve changed already, because nobody’s going to notice that on their own. Nobody’s going to guess that it is important, to assume that it’s somehow valuable. Harsh, but true. So today I want to focus on what we can do in practice to build more visibility. I’m going to share with you some of my own strategies, so you can just take, copy, and paste them, adding a little bit more flavour to your individual situation. We are going to divide those things into internal and external leadership visibility strategies. How to Build Visibility Inside the Organization? If you’re working in the organization: It can be a big organization / a corporate world, or in a smaller organization, but you are inside, what can you do to build your visibility? First, you have your team level. I’m sure that you have some team meetings, knowledge sharing sessions, weekly meetings, retrospectives; depends on the setup that you are working in. These are the places that are already designed for you to share knowledge, experiences, lessons, mistakes, or failures (with lessons learned) that you can show to others. When you speak up, this is always something that makes you more visible. So even if you’re a Base Imaginer, Base Thinker who has the preference to not speak up very much, I would like you to challenge yourself a little bit to be more verbal. I know that you believe that if you work hard in silence, you create valuable solutions to the problems the organization or clients face, the other people will notice you. I don’t want to be a dream-crusher here, but it’s just not going to happen. People are very focused on their own things and don’t have much spare energy to look around. You need to show them. So, I invite you to do one thing like that per week, in a bi-weekly meeting, or once per month. Start small: The goal is for your brain to see that it makes sense and is worth the stretch. Share something that you’ve created, optimised, or automated recently. Don’t make it complicated, just use what you’re already doing in your work. The second thing you can do is to share knowledge by sending some links to the podcast episodes that were interesting for you to others, a book you’ve read, a YouTube video you watched, or a digital course you’ve taken. I’m sure that you have some Teams / Slack / WhatsApp group in your company where you share some stuff. Leverage that: Share links to YouTube videos, to TED Talks, to podcasts, to books, to articles, to documentation, to Reddit, basically anything that you’re using to get knowledge. Share that with others with a short comment like: Hey! I’m sharing this as something interesting…, It helped me in a way that…, Check it out!”. Easy. You don’t even need to speak up verbally; you just copy and paste a link. But again, it puts you on the map that you share things with others. That way, you can become a go-to person for people who are looking for a certain answer or a source of knowledge. Being a go-to person builds visibility. Start with the team level and then move up. What can you do on the organizational level? Be the voice. The voice of the change or a project. Engage yourself in the project or initiative team, even if there is some extra work to do. You can always make a contract with your boss to be redirected when it comes to your work to a little bit to some project that is maybe like a matrix project in the organization. Maybe this is something different. Maybe this is something that you never done before. Being more visible by creating value is one of the most important things in organizations. The good news? It is not about speaking up all the time. It’s about being visible by being engaged. Of course, you can make some presentations, being a face of the project or initiative, during the Town Hall meeting, some other online or onsite gatherings. Even better! Check out what kind of possibilities there are in your organization that you can leverage. Be a mentor or a buddy for new joiners, or let others shadow you. There are more things you can do than you think. Choose what works for you, start with one thing, and then move to another one if you want. How to Build Visibility Outside the Organization? If you are outside of the organization: Maybe you are a consultant / a Fractional CTO / COO, etc.; if you are running your own business: you’re an entrepreneur, a Founder, you can do many things. And if you’re inside the organization, you can use some of those as well (these strategies are not reserved only for “the externals”). First, blogging. You can say that blogging is dead, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. People like to read, especially short forms. Because if you are a visual person, what you read sticks in your brain. So, blogging can be your visibility builder, especially when you take care of the SEO. It can be very well-positioned in Google and in AI tools where people are researching things. It is super easy and low-cost to start. Just start writing down what you know about. Share your expertise, research, pieces of lessons that you have, failures, and success stories. People love reading about those things. The second

Czytaj dalej

18 January 2026 No Comments

Leadership

Why Are We So Frustrated as Tech Leaders?

Just think about it for a moment. When was the last time you were angry, pissed off, or frustrated with the other person as a leader? Your direct report didn’t deliver something on time or to the quality that you wanted them to deliver? A person promised to do something, and they didn’t? Or a person asked you a question, you answered, and then they came back with the same question one time, two times, three times, five times? When was the time when you agreed on something? You made a contract on who is doing what: With the client, a contractor, or a vendor; you delivered your part, and they didn’t? Or they did, but the quality of the work was not so good, and you got angry, you thought a lot of not-so-nice things, and maybe you even behaved in an aggressive way. If you’re nodding right now, you’re in the right place. In this article, I’m going to give you answers on why you get so upset when things like that happen, and what to do to manage it better. Let’s go into it. Why am I reacting like that? Do you know people who, even if something’s going on, are calm? It might seem that they don’t even care when you look at them. They’re all chilled out. And then, it’s you: Frustrated, angry, mad at others. Burning up, losing energy, and being exhausted at the end of the day. Is it your reality? If yes, it means that from a personality perspective, you have a strong Thinker or a Persister floor in your Personality Condo. Maybe a Promoter as well, if you are getting angry with people for being too slow (in your frame of reference, of course). It means that your beliefs about yourself in the world go like this: Thinker: “People need to be competent, deliver work on time, efficiently covering what’s there to be done”. Persister: “People need to be trustworthy, fulfilling the contracts that we have for delivering things, following processes we have in place”. Promoter: “People need to be strong, fast, and self-sufficient. They need to act, instead of talk or analyse all the time”. If we have convictions like that in our brains, and it is our default way of working, every person who’s not doing things like that will make us angry or resentful. It’s mostly unconscious, and until we start learning more about Communication Intelligence (CQ), it’s an automatic thinking pattern we go into in every situation that jeopardises how we think the world should look. Eustress vs Distress The answer to why we’re reacting in an aggressive or manipulative way when we have those thoughts in our brains is that we are in distress. Let’s unpack the stress part, since it’s not very often described in two ways: Eustress and Distress. Eustress is a positive stress. It: mobilizes us to take action; positively influences ourselves and people around us; keeps us in strengthening beliefs, pushes us to do things that bring extraordinary results. Eustress is a feeling of excitement, a little bit of adrenaline rushing through our veins, making us brave to go into the uncomfortable. Like being on the stage, sharing things we are truly passionate about with the thought in our brains that we can really change something while sharing it with the world. But, as always, there’s a dark side to the story. Distress is a negative stress. It: is an automatic sequence of thinking, reacting, and doing things (or not doing them at all); negatively influences ourselves and the people around us; keeps us in limiting beliefs, takes us away from the access to the resources we have in ourselves (intellectual, emotional, cognitive, etc.). We go into distress most of the time right away in two situations: We don’t have our physiological needs covered; We don’t have our motivational / psychological needs covered. So, if you’re hungry, thirsty, you haven’t been in the bathroom for hours, you lack sleep or physical touch of a close person, your body is upset, which makes it distressed. And if your motivational needs connected to your personality Base are not covered, your brain and soul are upset, which makes it distressed. Distress is visible when we are anxious, our heart is beating fast, our blood pressure is high, our voice, hands, and knees are shaking, sometimes we have a sore throat, and we can’t even say a thing. It’s when we forget everything we wanted to say, even if we’re well-prepared and equipped. It’s when we lose the brain-spine connection, and we start to behave extremely weirdly, like we’re not ourselves anymore. That’s where the anger, frustration, and consequently, burnout comes. What can we do about it? The awareness is one thing (super important), but action is crucial. Some things will be transferable for every personality Base, and some will be tailored. Let’s start with the individual ones, connected with the 3 types we’ve talked about above: For Thinkers: Make clear contracts, share tasks and responsibilities transparently, and put deadlines whenever you can. Ask for feedback for your efficient work delivered regularly. Structure your day / week, book slots for deep work in your calendar, and protect your time. For Persisters: Make clear contracts, double-check if people have everything they need (resources, skills, technology, etc.) to work efficiently. Ask for feedback for your principled work regularly. Share your convictions with others and have a conversation when you can gather positive recognition for what you believe in. For Promoters: Make a plan and follow it. Remember that not all people work as fast as you, so give them more time before the deadline is due. Take care of the diversification of what you do, so you don’t get bored too quickly. Plan some adrenaline rushes in your private and/or work life. The things you can do to protect yourself from going into distress that are universal to all personality bases are not fancy. I don’t think

Czytaj dalej

11 January 2026 No Comments