424 | Stop overworking: 4 ways to decline extra work without hurting your reputation
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Why does saying “yes” to extra work hurt my reputation and sanity?
If you're feeling overworked in your nine to five job, you are probably facing a dilemma. On the one hand, you want to reduce your workload so you can maintain a sense of sanity. But on the other hand, you want to look good, you want to look like a team player, you don't want to look like someone who says no when they get asked to work on something. We think that the thing that makes Makes us look good is whether we say yes or whether we say no. And we have to say yes if we want to look good. But actually, the thing that makes you look good is how you say no. When you learn how to decline extra work in a way that makes you look strategic and thoughtful, you are able to control your workload. while growing your reputation.
And that's what I'm going to help you with today. Now, to help you reduce and minimize your workload, we have to look at what causes your workload to grow bigger in the first place. And there are typically four different things that can cause that to happen. Those things are on the spot asks, vague projects, scope creep, and churn. And each of these has a different solution. So I'm going to go through them one by one. By one and teach you how to respond to each one so that it doesn't sabotage your workload. So we're going to start with on the spot asks. This is where you get asked on the spot to do a task that doesn't fall within your scope of responsibility. So maybe you're sitting in a meeting with a bunch of cross-functional coworkers, and then everybody realizes: oh, we need to pull some data and send it to the group.
Group after the meeting. And that task doesn't have a clear owner. And so someone turns to you and says, Hey, do you mind pulling the data and sending it to us? It really grinds my gears when people do this because it feels a bit sabotagey and manipulative to me. I think sometimes people know in the back of their minds that if they ask you to do something and they make the ask in In front of a group of people, you're going to feel pressured to say yes to it. And often they will describe it as if the thing you're being asked to do is super quick and super easy. And so much of the time it ends up being complicated and eating up your time. And now you're in a situation where you kind of have this lose-lose dynamic.
You either say yes to something that's going to add to an already full work. Workload, or you say no to it, and then you risk looking like you're not a team player. The solution to being put on the spot in this way is to decline the task in a way that makes you look like a highly focused, highly strategic leader. So if someone says to you, hey, do you mind taking that on and sending it to the group? you should respond by saying, Something like, my team is heads down on some high priority time-sensitive work right now. Does anybody else have immediate capacity to own this task? When you say this, you are declining the task without actually saying no. And you're declining it in a way that makes you look strategic because you're not coming in and saying, sorry guys, I can't do this.
You're coming In and saying, I have very important things that are taking my focus right now. Is there someone else who can own this deliverable? I call it a soft no. You're saying no without actually ever saying no. Now, I want to give you a quick bonus tip and a backup plan because when you get put on the spot and asked to do something in a meeting, it might be hard for you. You to remember to say this. And you might need to practice before you get comfortable responding in this way. So if you need a quick, easy, safe backup plan, all you have to do is say, let me look at my capacity and circle back with you. That way you're not giving them a yes, you're not giving them a no, you're just buying them time.
And then after the meeting, you can send a note saying, hey. It's looking like we're heads down on some time-sensitive stuff. Can someone else take this one on? So that's a really great thing to do if you get overwhelmed in the moment and you need something quick and easy that you can say to wiggle out of you having to say yes to that deliverable.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
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