By Blaz Verhnjak

Just say no.

I read really good article this morning about saying no and it reminded me on the problem I am trying to solve for a long time. 

Since ever I didn’t know how to turn down coffee with friends or how not to give a hand somebody in need. When I started to work as freelancer and afterwards as employee nothing changed. I would take all the projects and try to make a favour on every step. 

With the time I realised that I lost all of my hobbies and generally lost interest. Even though I tried t help others and to set myself better position in industry it brought me to condition where I was almost unable to help and creatively express myself. Which makes kind of a loop… Whole situation made me think.

After ‘hours of thinking’ I realised that there are things we think we want in the moment but in order to have time to do our passion projects, see our friends and have fun etc. We have to learn to turn down opportunities. To have time to chill out enough to make good work. We have to learn to say no and not always offer to do more work or help people. Even though we want to. 

The problem is that saying yes does not always mean we get to do lots of work. Saying yes does not always mean we get to go further and go faster. Sometimes it means we sleep less and work too hard, and we do not have good ideas and energy. Saying yes can sometimes stop us. 

I guess that trick is in setting yourself limitations. 

Ok. Get it. But here is the pickle.. How does it goes along with such course as SCA? 

That’s reason I am still kind of worried about this year.

When I signed for this school I decided that I will work hard and work harder. Is sounds like saying ‘yes’ a lot. But where is the limit? I heard that weekend and night are time zones that should be kept as our time, whatever we do, but after one month I already failed. But let’s say that we’ll sort it out.

What about sharing work between team members. I notice in the room at SCA that some people are very good at saying no, some people are very good at not doing things and although this is frustrating, it means they get a better deal in the end really. And there are times I am thinking: ”I have to learn to say no like these people.” But what if I don’t want project to be failure? 

And in the end we have all sort of different projects we could/should be working on in our free time and Twitter we should now use all the time. 

Is organisation solution I am looking for?

I know… Lots of questions.

I will do my best to provide some answers in upcoming weeks.