You Simply Can’t Do Everything
Many of us say yes because we are eager to please others.
You want the people you work for to look at you and call you a reliable person. So when people ask us for favors, we say yes without batting an eye.
At the end of the day, you realize you have your own personal work and other people’s work to do on top of that. You try your best to fulfill all the responsibilities on your plate. But obviously, you end up doing a mediocre job. The person who asked you for the favor will look at you and judge you based on your less than average performance.
You could have avoided all of this, if you had just said, “No.”
You can pick and choose how you spend your 24 hours in a day, you might as well do it wisely.
Spend your time on people who are important to you.
Your co-workers might look disappointed at first when you say no to them, but it will only last for a few minutes. Later they will come to respect you for your commitment and value your time highly.
Now that you understand the importance of prioritizing your life. How do you discern what’s important and what’s “less important” (mind you, I won’t label anything as not important, because as a people-pleaser myself, everything someone asks me to do is important).
How do you prioritize?
Start small by asking yourself the questions: “Can I do the favor co-worker X is asking of me, given the time and resources I have?”
Then as you get better at compromising and saying no more often, you can ask yourself better and bolder questions like:
“Is this the most important thing that I can be doing with my resources right now?”
Moving on from work environments, let me focus on our personal lives. I’m a college student and if you’re like me, and planning your career, you’re probably overwhelmed with the vast opportunities available to you.
I have personally tried juggling up to five courses for two years straight and let me tell you. It is not pretty. I ended up only passing two courses out of five with excellent colors. In the third course, I barely passed. And the other two, I studied hard but failed.
You decide to choose the amount of work you take. You probably know by now, I’m a person who likes to do a little bit of everything. But I’ve come to change for the better, and now I ask myself three questions in order to identify what specific work I want to spend my time doing.
Those questions are:
1) what do I feel deeply inspired by?
2) what am I particularly talented at?
3) what meets a significant need in the world?
That way, I learnt to spend my time less on everything that is hot and popular at the moment and spend my time more on something truly fulfilling.
Lesson Learnt: Try not to be a small participant in every opportunity you come across. Instead “go big” in one or two special activities that are close to your heart.
Hi! I’m Dave! I’d appreciate it if you press the ‘clap’ icon on the page! That way I would know whether you liked what you just read :) Have a nice day.
