Hello everyone,
here
Lately I've been talking a lot about "priorities" and "focus", and last week I talked about "when giving up can be the right thing to do". It seems to have hit on some common ache points, so I want to follow up with another crucial topic.
There's another difficult confroontation many people face that makes them lose sight of their priorities.
It's when you feel the need to say "Yes" to everything
Generally, what happens is that you soon get overwhelmed. Because you've created burdens on yourself to other people's priorities, you feel pressure or tensed to please all the people you've promised. Automatically, when you end up being unable to fulfil everyone's wishes - it leaves everyone unhappy.
Your original well wishes turn into acrimony, or leaves you drained of motivation and energy. In the end, it does no good to anyone.
A crucial fact about productivity is that is not all about time-saving, technical tricks and tips. Before any of that matters - what's more essential is having a big-picture perspective, which gives you clarity. Clarity helps you to make wise decisions. If you're not making good decisions, all the coolest productivity hacks won't rescue you.
Basically, when we don't have a big-picture perspective, we're usually only looking at things from one side of the coin... Such as believing that saying "Yes" all the time is the altruistic thing to do. Most times we end up shooting ourselves in the foot.
One major key to big-picture perspective then, is being able to see both sides of the coin in any given condition. Just like understanding when giving up can be positive, knowing when to say "No" on the other hand can be positive too
NOTE
The naked truth is that most problems/situation can be avoided in the first place with just a little change in mindset.
So if feeling the need to say "Yes" all the time is a big challenge for you, learning how to say "No" can turn out to be one of your biggest productivity boosters. (amongst other things!)
This also connotes that understanding that it's not necessarily a negative or even a selfish thing.
Secondly, it means learning the right time to say "No" and how to say it constructively.
All images were culled from pixabay