20 Quotes to Encourage You to Say “NO” More Often than You Say “YES”

People are effective because they say no

One of the reasons we’re so busy in North America is our inability to say “No”.

We find it challenging to say “No” to our bosses, colleagues, family members, friends, and even strangers.

We say “Yes” all the time because…

We feel the need to help.

We feel hyperproductive by taking on more.

We assume that saying “No” is a sign of weakness.

We don’t want to offend.

We want to be liked.

Saying “No” makes us feel guilty.

As a result, we have no boundaries to protect our time. We have no limits, and we have no rules that guide what we can do and cannot do.

Today, we live in a society where boundaries have disappeared. These days there don’t seem to be any boundaries at all regarding when people expect us to be available to work. Technology has made this worse as the lines between work and family are blurred.

If you want to accomplish important goals in life, you would agree that extreme focus is required. And that focus must be directed at just one thing. So, it is critical to learn to say “No” more often than you say “Yes”. This will require you to set boundaries and limits that protect your time.

In his book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown writes:

If you don’t set boundaries — there won’t be any. Or even worse, there will be boundaries, but they’ll be set by default — or by another person — instead of by design.

He goes on to make the distinction between Nonessentialists and Essentialists when it comes to setting boundaries:

Nonessentialists tend to think of boundaries as constraints or limits, things that get in the way of their hyperproductive life. To a Nonessentialist, setting boundaries is evidence of weakness. If they are strong enough, they think, they don’t need boundaries. They can cope with it all. They can do it all. But without limits, they eventually become spread so thin that getting anything done becomes virtually impossible.

Essentialists, on the other hand, see boundaries as empowering. They recognize that boundaries protect their time from being hijacked and often free them from the burden of having to say no to things that further others’ objectives instead of their own. They know that clear boundaries allow them to proactively eliminate the demands and encumbrances from others that distract them from the true essentials.

Here are 20 quotes to encourage you as you learn to say “No” more often than you say “Yes”:

Quote # 1

“No” is a complete sentence — Anne Lamott

Quote # 2

“We live in a ‘yes’ culture, where it’s expected that the person who is going to get ahead is the go-getter who says yes to everything that comes their way” — Dara Blaine (NY Times)

Quote # 3

“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying ‘yes’ too quickly and not saying ‘no’ soon enough.” — Josh Billings

Quote # 4

“In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time — literally — substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.” — Peter Drucker

Quote # 5

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” — John Maxwell

Quote # 6

“This doesn’t mean you have to be cynical about people. I don’t mean to imply people shouldn’t be trusted. I am simply saying everyone is selling something — an idea, a viewpoint, an opinion — in exchange for your time. Simply being aware of what is being sold allows us to be more deliberate in deciding whether we want to buy it.” — Greg McKeown

Quote # 7

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” — Henry David Thoreau

Quote # 8

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs

Quote # 9

“We need to learn the slow ‘yes’ and the quick ‘no.’” ― Tom Friel

Quote # 10

“The world has recently changed very fast. We used to live in a world in which we didn’t need an inner no, because no was all around us. Now we live in a world designed to give us what we think we want. Now yes is all around us. An outer yes requires an inner no.” — William Leith (The Guardian)

Quote # 11

“No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility.” — James Clear

Quote # 12

“Entrepreneurs succeed when they say ‘yes’ to the right project, at the right time, in the right way. To accomplish this, they have to be good at saying ‘no’ to all their other ideas.” — Reid Hoffman

Quote # 13

“Every time we say yes to a request, we are also saying no to anything else we might accomplish with the time.” — Tim Harford

Quote # 14

“I want as absolutely little in my calendar as possible. I’m meticulous about it. Whatever the least amount possible I can have in my calendar without killing my career — that’s what I want.” — Ryan Holiday

Quote # 15

“Anytime you fail to say ‘no’ to a nonessential, you are really saying yes by default.” — Greg McKeown

Quote # 16

“Too often productivity gurus focus on how to do things quickly, but the vast majority of things people do quickly should not be done at all. “— Marc Chernoff

Quote # 17

“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”— Peter Drucker

Quote # 18

“Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the businesses that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments.” — Marry Buffett and David Clark (The Tao of Warren Buffett)

Quote # 19

“The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” — Lin Yutang

Quote # 20

“Most of what exists in the universe — our actions, and all other forces, resources, and ideas — has little value and yields little results; on the other hand, a few things work fantastically well and have tremendous impact.” — Richard Koch

Final Thoughts

I love the quote from Anne Lamott.

“No” is a complete sentence”

Next time, when you say no, remember that it is a complete sentence. You don’t need to explain, you don’t need to justify, and more importantly, you can say it guilt-free.

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