Stop Saying Yes to Everything!
People don’t care how busy you are however, you should absolutely care about how productive you and your team are. And the key to achieving that is in understanding your priorities and then sticking to them day-in, day-out so that you can get to the end of your week knowing that you couldn’t have done any more to support the achievement of team goals.
The thing about priorities is that they change constantly and so maintaining your productivity will also require that you regularly question what you’re doing and its value (to stakeholders/customers) at that moment. People in positions of authority regularly change their mind, so it’s up to you to validate their requests against the current list of priorities and reset accordingly.
The same is also true at an organisation level. I haven’t worked with an organisation yet that isn’t doing more work than it has the capacity for, especially with regards to projects. A big issue that I continue to see, especially at the start of a financial year, is the belief that every project listed in the plan will get delivered on time and to budget. This is despite the fact that there is often no historical proof that has ever happened! Optimism bias kills project portfolios every year. Quarterly reviews can help to address this, but only if senior managers are bold enough to stop some of the things that they’d like to do, in favour of creating time and space for the things that they need to do.
This is something that media service provider Spotify recognised a number of years ago and decided to address. Now they only ever take on 10 ‘bets’ (or projects) at any given time and will only start a new one when something on the list has been completed or stopped.
I think the answer’s yes
Most individuals, however, will take the ‘always say yes’ approach to new work and load up their days with more work they can handle. They then look to blame others for their complicity.
This lack of discipline around prioritisation can be infectious, yet it only takes one person to transform the way an organisation thinks, especially if it’s someone in a senior leadership position who encourages people to follow their lead.
Tobi Luttke, CEO of multi-billion dollar company Shopify, caused a bit of a stir on social media at the end of 2019 when he said that, despite popular commentary about the nature of profitable startups, he doesn’t have to work 80 hours a week and is home by 5.30pm every night. Not only that, but he believes that there are only five hours of productive time available on any given day and that he only expects Shopify staff to work four of those.
It’s a refreshing take on the ‘always busy, but not productive’ problem and an example of a CEO who role-models the behaviour expected of others.
Key to making the most of this productive time is to ensure that the number of things you have to do during your day matches the amount of time available to do them, not the amount of time you’re awake in the day. Create your task list the night before and block out the time to do the work the next day. This may include declining meetings that are of a lower value than the work you have to get done.
Fixed mindset people will tell you that this is an impossible dream, but it’s not. And for those afraid to say ‘no’, here’s the thing: sometimes you don’t have to say ‘no’ at all!
Here are some responses you could offer those that seek to add new work to your already crowded days:
- ‘That’s a great idea (if it is!) and if I get time at the end of the day I’ll come back to it, otherwise I’ll schedule it in for later this week’
- ‘I have a full day of productive work planned, but I can plan this in for tomorrow’
- ‘Which task would you like me to drop from today in order to accommodate this one?’ — this is especially useful with managers
- ‘I understand this may be pressing for you, however, this is not a priority for me today/this week’ — this is useful for those people who are appalling at planning their days and expect you to drop everything to accommodate that
- ‘I’ll need to escalate this to my manager to check it’s a relevant priority compared to the other work we have on’.
I’m not suggesting that anyone be bloody-minded about their plans for the day. As I mentioned earlier, the ability to be able to re-prioritise at a moment’s notice is also important. As Stephen Covey said in his book First Things First, ‘Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.’
However, without a clear view of what needs to be done in your day, the tendency will be to always say yes to things that will probably ensure that you do six things to a lower level of quality, rather than three things to the highest. And in those scenarios, even though you’re saying yes to everything, you end up delivering nothing.
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