For those of you in my online class Organize Or Agonize , already know my advice about what saying no means for your personal well being. This morning I read this great article on reframing your thinking about saying no.

Saying no isn’t easy, but it’s a required skill if you wish to have any degree of focus in your life. If you say yes too often, you’ll likely fall into the common trap of saying yes to the good while simultaneously saying no to the best.

There is no unconditional yes. Whenever you say yes, you’re also uttering a background no. Whenever you allocate time to one pursuit, you say no to everything else you could have done with that time.

Not too long ago, Blockbuster Video initiated a “no late fees” policy. In a way they’re saying yes to their customers who complained about having to pay late fees when returning a movie after the due date. But this policy has a side effect. Because there are no late fees, customers keep movies they’ve rented for a longer period of time before bothering to return them. So now when you go to Blockbuster to rent the latest releases, which used to be stocked abundantly, they’re more likely to be all picked out. The videos are in people’s houses instead of on the store shelves. I’ve heard Blockbuster employees apologizing for this policy on numerous occasions, usually in response to customer complaints that the new releases can’t be rented. The value of knowing you could go to Blockbuster Video and rent whatever you wanted is no longer there.

Read the full article

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