Get More Time Back In Your Day By Learning To Say No

I will decline a meeting invite in a heartbeat! I don’t care who you are or what you want. If you are looking to get my attention, asking to lock up an hour of my time is the wrong way to do it.

Professionally, my colleagues think I’m mad. Am I the only person in the world willing to openly admit that I hate meetings?

When I see slots on my calendar start to fill up I feel claustrophobic. It’s as though the walls are closing in on me. Perhaps that’s a bit extreme! The point is I am not the meeting guy… at all!

The lie you were told.

For some odd reason business culture has programmed us to believe the more meetings you attend, the more important you are.

Personally, I know people that spend 9 hours a day chasing meetings. Most of the time when they are in the meeting, they are heads down typing away. And how can you blame them.

Their inability to be able to get real work done throughout the day is directly related to being consumed by other people and mostly meaningless, recurring engagements that has become the norm.

This also applies outside of the office.

Perhaps it’s silly, but I will not go somewhere or do something I don’t want to do just because everyone else is doing it.

Cleaning out my closet.

Lately I’ve been removing myself from certain platforms.

For example, I went through all my threads on GroupMe and really evaluated if it was meaningful to continue to get alerts every 5 minutes that didn’t align with the direction I was traveling.

Needless to say, I removed myself from about 6 groups. And it’s not personal. I like the people in most of those groups. However, it was just a waste and drain on my time.

Same goes for social media platforms… and people, and whatever else you can think of.

There are apps I won’t even download because I don’t see the “value add”. I don’t even have the regular Facebook app (or messenger) on my phone.

Time is our most important asset.

The importance of your time is incredibly overlooked. It is something we say, but our actions don’t align.

In most corporate environments, you spend more time (and an incredible amount of money) talking about what is going to be done versus actually doing something.

I’m a creator first… which means in order for me to innovate, I need space and time to build.

Additionally, I’ve learned to prioritize what’s most meaningful. That’s professionally, personally, and recreationally. This does not mean I will never take a meeting. I’m simply saying I’m more careful about what I spend my time doing.

My father (God rest his soul) spent so much time doing things he didn’t want to do.

One of the last conversations we had consisted of him telling me how much time he wasted being consumed with agendas that in the end turned out to be consuming and meaningless.

Think about all the time you’ve spent over the years wasted on apps, people, tasks, and meetings. Now think about how relevant those things are today.

My suggestion to you is to start saying no and take your time back.