Just Say No: Time Management Starts With Knowing When To Say No

Time management is the key to attaining your goals. Fact is, every single day, people are after your time and your money.
Does that sound paranoid?
Maybe it is, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Most of the time, it isn’t malicious. Here are a few common scenarios:

• You’re killing it at work. You provide value. Your employer wants you to help with a project that’s important to their future. It’s going to take an additional 20 hours to get it done.
• Your friends want to take a weekend trip to Florida. It’s going to be amazing, and it’s also going to cost a decent chunk of change.
• Your girlfriend wants to spend more quality time together. She wants to make sure you go out on a real, actual date at least once a week. You’ve been so busy that you haven’t always been making the time.
• Also, you’re busy AF, already operating at capacity.

Have you ever been in this scenario before? You have three things you really want to do, but you simply don’t have enough time in the day to agree to all three.
That happens because you are still developing the ability to say no.
When you say yes to everything, you end up with too much to do and too much money committed to far too many things. You always feel rushed, and you might even feel broke depending on how much you’re earning.
And now, you’re in a situation in which you feel like you have to turn your back on your job, your friends, or your girlfriend because you’re simply don’t have enough time in the day to handle all three.

The Importance Of Saying No

Developing the ability to turn things down gives you your life back. Instead of having to pick between three awesome things, you can make sure that you get them all. Or, if that’s not possible, it prevents you from over-promising and then imploding.
You see, believe it or not, there are tons and tons of things in your life that you don’t need. Subscriptions, meetings, side gigs, memberships — the list goes on.
At some point, you said yes to it, and you accepted into your life. It has become assumed.
Added up, you’ve maxed out your schedule, so that when something that actually benefits your life comes up, you feel like you’d be overwhelming yourself to agree.
By learning to say no, you can keep your time management in check so that you can give your time and money to the things that matter most.

What Can You Say No To?

This is one of the reasons why priorities are so important. They serve as your guiding light when you’re working on time management.
Take a look at your life and decide what really matters to you. What do you love? What would be tough to do without? Where do you see your life in six months, two years, five years?
From there, it’s fairly simple. The things that made that list need to stay in your life. The things that didn’t, well, they might need to go.
If you love your job and it’s important to you, then find a way to work on that project. Just understand that something else needs to go. Perhaps you were taking guitar lessons.
The world isn’t going to end if you don’t learn to play guitar. It’s nice, but it’s not a must for you. Give that up, at least for now, and you might have time.
You love your girlfriend and don’t want to lose her. You want to make more time for her, so you want to agree to your weekly game plan. Look around. Are you actually spending like 10 hours a week playing video games?
Cut back. It sounds silly until you take stock of how you really are spending your time.
Your friends are awesome, but their trip is right around the same time that this work project is due. You like your friends, but you love this job and want to still be there in five years, higher up than you are now.
As great as your friends are, you’re going to have to sit this trip out. Next time.
At the end of the day, it’d be ideal if there were infinity hours per day. You could say yes to everything. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. You need to learn time management and how to say no and cut certain things out of your life.
By focusing on your priorities — what’s really important to you — you can do a better job of making sure that the good stuff stays around.