Find the joy in saying “no”.

Recently I made a change to a much smaller company after working with large national and multinational organisations for over 25 years.

For as long as I can remember in those companies my days were almost entirely filled with meetings. Some were what I’d call productive and others were those corporate meetings and conference calls that after a short while you just knew you were wasting an hour of your life you’d never get back. Tasks such as emails or the ever-requested powerpoint decks I’d usually get done after work. But within just a few weeks without those “back-to-back” days I’d endured for years, I’ve realised just how unproductive I really was. I now spend far more time assimilating industry reports, writing papers and articles and planning. I used to write a social blog when I worked in Asia but that was only ever done on flights around the region where no one could interrupt me and I was free to think away.

Sure, I was contributing to decisions that had to be made and some of those team meetings were important but on reflection, so many, if I was brutally honest I didn’t need to be in and the world wouldn’t have fallen apart if I wasn’t there. I know I’m not alone on this one as I’ve found the same thing at all the large companies I’ve worked for. Was I a poor delegator? Maybe, but increasingly I found it getting harder to delegate meetings as organisations cut back headcount under the relentless mantra of “do-more-with-less” and the culture of “wanting the most senior executive representing your area to attend” since the GFC has increasingly pushed decision making up-line after years of being taught to delegate it downline (at least that’s been my experience in financial services). Heck, senior executives can’t even get an executive assistant these days. You’re expected to do your own typing (did I say I’m a great 2-finger typist?) answering over 100 emails a day or writing reports and with global travel systems it’s a self-help world for managing your diary and booking your travel.

Lord knows I’ve tried to apply many of the techniques I learned starting with Priority Management back in the 80’s and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits but it seemed no sooner that I adopted these, the corporation conspired to derail my new found skills. I had the very best intentions but making it all work back at the office for some reason just seemed to be too hard as you pushed against that meeting culture and acceded to the demands of the corporation.

It was during a weekend conversation recently with a partner of a Top 4 consulting firm about the pressures of work and after debating what were possible solutions that success we agreed boiled down to starting with just one thing – you, the individual making the conscious decision to take more control of your own time. As I have been told many times in productivity programmes “if you allow it to, the company will simple fill your days with it’s priorities, leaving you no time for your own”. My colleague said pushing back and saying “No” to some of those invites and blocking times in his diary for “me time” has been the single biggest revelation. He’s actually able to empty his Inbox before heading home and has more time to do his real job. For the first time in many years he feels more in control of his diary and his meaningful work output has jumped.

Now I’m not saying I didn’t know any of this but having someone who is frantically busy share the positive impact of applying the theory just seemed to really hit home. When I think back about the most productive managers I’ve worked with, they were all pretty disciplined masters of their time and seemed far more productive than me. One of the best managers I worked for told his team to “reject any meeting invite that does not have an agenda and clear outcomes for the meeting included”. While other departments in the company initially got upset at the rate of declines from our team, it freed us up to focus on just the most important meetings. Ultimately the whole organisation adopted the approach resulting in hugely more productive meetings and were shorter than the hour allotted.

Is it easy? Nope, but as they say the most rewarding things in life never are. My friend will tell you it’s been amazingly impactful on his work life and has taken away that helplessness he sometimes felt as his diary ran him. So if you’re like I was, take that one step and be in greater control.

The post The joy in saying “No” appeared first on AdviserVoice.