Why You Should Learn To Say No

If you don’t say no to the things that really don’t matter to you, your life will be a mess and you will be stretched too thin.

One day you will wake up and realize that you have too much going on.

You are too busy.

In America, busyness has become a good thing that we should all strive for. But is it really?

If you become too busy you feel overwhelmed and eventually, your focus scatters. And without focus, you will fail.

The book by Cal Newport called Deep Work states:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

The work you produce isn’t just about the time you spend, but rather about the amount of focus you have. Someone could be spending one hour but with blazing focus, and get the same amount of work done as someone that is doing four hours of work but with a quarter of the focus.

Choose your priorities or they will choose you

Make a list of all the things you do.

Now number the top five that you value most.

Make sure when something is less important interferes with your priorities then choose your priority. If you don’t choose your priorities and live on, you will forget how you once thought you were on.

For example, if your work has a meeting that you need to attend, but one of your family members is sick. You might still go to the meeting to think that you still have enough time. But in reality, you might have just been too late.

Create your priorities, stick with them, and if something intervenes… say NO.

Why Say No

The reason you should say no is that it lets you have more time to relax and allows you to be more focused when needed.

Everyone says no, every day. Whether you realize it or not you denied a lot of your life.

For example, at like 3–4 pm you might feel drowsy and want to drink coffee. But you say no and don’t because you know it will make your sleep horrendous.

So say no to the things that might negatively affect you or things that don’t matter to you. Your life will be fine if you only keep the things that are needed in life.

Why you are spread too thin

The world we live in is built from opinions.

We (as in Americans) see famous people doing something then we get so fed up to do it to then forget the path we were on in the beginning.

When you pursue something only for the fact that someone else is, it will make you burn out much faster than if you actually wanted to do it. Your skills aren’t really valuable unless you spend lots of time perfecting them. So these experiences might be good but you need to choose the ones that will be the most impactful on you.

If you don’t, your life will be a mess and you will find yourself like a building. If you break a level, your life will crumble apart.

Find the things you love and want, and pursue them. Don’t do the things that will leave you where you started.

Make it easier to do your priorities

You want to make the things that you pursue to be easier and make the things that you want to stop harder to get to.

If you want to pursue writing, you might find a spot for only reading and writing your thoughts. Then another for actually writing the article. Whatever you do, you will have a specific place for that specific thing.

After a week or two of doing this, your brain will make the assumption that when you are at that spot you want to start writing, or something else. This will allow you to get into the flow state much faster.

If you have a spot, make sure that it is only for that work, because if you don’t, your brain will tend to wander elsewhere.

Final thoughts

To find the time and make better decisions in your life, you need to get rid of the things that aren’t essential to you. Without doing this you will lead yourself vulnerable to being controlled and lost.

Make more room for your priorities. Master the skill of choosing and you will be able to control your life, not someone else.

Take control and chase your wildest dreams. To be the best you can be, all the correct decisions you can.