?? A lesson on saying no

?? On The Clock is a biweekly newsletter sharing opinions and advice on the world of work — and the way it should be. If this episode was sent to you, subscribe here so you don't miss the next one!

Hey ??

Welcome back to this week's volume of ?? On The Clock.

This week I want to talk about saying no at work.?

I was recently talking to another marketer on my team about burnout, how people get to breaking point, and most importantly — what we can do about it. She mentioned that when working at another company, she repeatedly told her team lead she was feeling overworked.

Their answer??

“Well, you just need to learn to say no to people.”

This is… very problematic ??

We all want to be team players. None of us want to let the side down. But let’s be

very clear — this type of response is problematic because it makes burnout the employee’s problem to fix.?

It conveniently ignores the primary source of burnout: the workplace.?

When Gallup surveyed 7500 full-time employees to figure out what caused burnout, they uncovered a couple of main contributors: unfair treatment at work, unmanageable workload, a lack of role clarity and not enough support from managers.?

Respondents also pointed to another factor — unreasonable time pressure ?

Firstly, this is a good reminder to anyone (well, most of us) reading this that we aren’t paramedics or firefighters. Not to say our work isn’t important, but the sun will still rise tomorrow if we don’t get to that Slack message or task immediately. Trust me.

Secondly, these (unrealistic) time constraints people put on tasks are a huge part of why it’s hard to say no. You might instantly remember a time when you were asked to help with something that “won’t take long!". Or maybe they were promising it'll be "10 minutes, max!”

And that's the reason we can’t say no — the person truly believes it'll only take 10 minutes.?

The problem with always saying yes is it never takes 10 minutes. And the more you say yes, the more your list piles up.?

To stop all this overwork from snowballing and turning into burnout, change needs to start at the top ??

Leaders need to throw some water on the burnout snowball

Unreasonable deadlines and overflowing task lists will eventually have a snowball effect. And once it gets too much, that snowball can easily manifest into serious burnout.?

For personal schedules, wrangling back control is doable. At work? Not so much.?

A major study by Atlassian found 65% of workers feel it’s more important to react to notifications than work on actual tasks. Not only is this notification brain drain stopping us from doing work that matters, but it also shows we are obsessed with taking care of other people’s needs above our own workloads.?

Fixing this is a cultural dynamic that can be solved with the right communication and policies.

Less is more. Seriously.?

The ironic thing about constantly saying yes to tasks and adding them to your to do list is it makes you more unproductive.?

Back in June, Scott Young published a piece called You’re Trying to Do Too Much, where he argued creating space is more beneficial for getting stuff done than adding more things to our to do lists. His theory was simple: given our time is a finite resource, every "yes" to taking on another task leaves less room for the things already on your schedule.?

So, what does protecting this finite resource look like in practice??

At Toggl, the ability to say no to extra work is baked into our policies. We have 24 hours to reply to each other on Slack, and if our schedules are full — we can say so without any repercussions.

A good chunk of our communication is done on public channels, so when we need input from other departments, it’s never with a message that says “this will take 10 minutes, are you cool with that?”

It’s more like this:

If you have time to help, great! But if you don’t, nobody is going to hold it against you.

And again, the sun will still rise tomorrow.??

Our internal teams are also asked to follow a “share early and often” rule. If we know we will need help with a project, we must resist the urge to keep things to ourselves until they are final. Openly sharing progress builds trust, prevents micromanagement, and gives people the chance to be upfront about capacity without feeling pressured to say yes.??

The tl;dr of this newsletter isn’t to say the work we do isn’t important. Or that you shouldn’t say yes to tasks. It's definitely not to say you shouldn’t help your team when they ask. The message is simply that we need to stop the burnout snowball and admit we are trying to do everything… everywhere… all at once.?

So, can you do me a solid? ??

Next time you get asked to do something you just do not have time for, try saying no.

I promise you, the sun will still rise tomorrow.?

Thanks for reading????On The Clock?— see ya in two weeks ??