Black Belt Productivity

One of the most frustrating problems that I have personally had to deal with in life management is learning to say “no”. And as I get older, I realize more and more, that it is OK to say “no” from time to time.

Once, almost ten years ago, I found myself completely over extended. I was a full time employee, a part time student, a deacon, the discipleship director and the treasurer of three different not-for-profits (this happens to you when people that are in not-for-profits find out you are an accountant). I had been married less than a year, and I traveled almost every week on my job. I could not say “no” to anyone…and my life was miserable.

I finally reached a point where I had to start walking away from things, and telling some people “no”. Fortunately, I was able to find an equilibrium that worked for me before Melody and I had children.

Unfortunately, I can imagine that many who are reading this are saying, “MAN, I remember a time like that in my life.”

In Ready for Anything, David Allen talks about that fact that one of the reasons that many of us stay over committed, is because we do not have a good inventory of our current commitments.

David often says that the only way to feel good about what we are not doing is to know everything that we are not doing. The same goes for our commitments, the only way to keep our commitments under control is to know all of our commitments.

The tendency is to just be helpful and say yes to everything. This can be for any of several reasons. We could do it in hopes of maintaining acceptance, or because we do not want to hurt that other person, or it could even be because we think, “Well, someone has to do it”.

If we maintain a good list of the commitments (projects) that we are already shackled to, it may help us to understand what adding another commitment can do to us.

This is the power of the weekly review. The weekly review is the best tool in helping us stay on top of our commitments. We can review our roles, our contexts, and our project. In doing so, we get a picture of what we are committed to.

If we have an honest picture of the things we are committed to, we can better manage our projects in a way that benefits both us, and those items and people to whom we are committed.

- Jason