Has someone asked you to do something recently that you know you don’t have time to do but felt like you needed to do anyway? Or has someone tried to get you to help with something and impressed upon you just how important it is? You probably told them “yes” out of guilt or obligation or some other kind of negative emotion. Sure, you could have declined but you thought about how bad you would feel if someone did the same to you.

Let me tell you clearly. “No” is a complete sentence. It requires no explanation or defense. It is the only thing you need to say when you know you won’t be able to do something no matter how much the other party tries to get you to agree.

Everything Sucking Equally

If you know anything about QoS, you know that once a given circuit reaches the limitation for bandwidth you can no longer send additional information. What’s counterintuitive about this is most people would assume that if you try to squeeze one more stream or packet into the mix that only that last packet would be affected and everything else would work perfectly fine, right? Only one of the many would suck.

Sadly, all of the packets or flows on the circuit are affected in this situation. Adding just one more thing to the mix means all things are affected because the system has to process the problems all at once. You suffer everywhere because the interface couldn’t say “no” to that last packet.

In fact, the whole mantra behind QoS is prioritizing information before it hits a given interface because the interface is just going to send whatever it is given. Those packets will queue up or eventually be dropped if they can’t be processed. Likewise, if you are trying to do too many things at once you will eventually miss something important and make a mistake because you couldn’t handle everything at once. You need to be able to prioritize all the things that are going on and know when you hit a limit you can’t get past.

Where the challenge comes into play is when others try to add more to the interface without knowing you’re at maximum capacity. It’s easy for someone to ask you to do just one more little thing. In their minds it’s not a huge ask, right? In your mind you’ve already begun trying to juggle all the things that need to be changed to make this one little thing work with all the other things you’ve spent so much time prioritizing. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to just say “yes” to avoid uncomfortable conversations and try to fix the problems as they come up rather than turning away something you know would put you over your limit.

Taking No For an Answer

It’s easy to tell people to say “no”, right? I mean it is possibly the shortest sentence in the English language. However, it’s not the person saying it that usually has an issue. The people doing the asking are the ones that almost invariably are the ones trying to convince, cajole, or outright impress upon the person how critical it is that whatever this is get done in addition to all the other things that are going on.

For those that are asking the question and expecting a positive answer, let me ask you a question of my own: Why does this person need to do the task? There usually are very good reasons for it. Perhaps it’s something this person specializes in. Maybe it’s something that only they have knowledge about. It could perhaps even be their job responsibility to get it done. But the next question you need to ask is even more important.

If they must do this task, what can I do to help them?

The calling card of bad management types is to show up, assign a bunch of tasks that only other people should do, and then fly away to measure their productivity and comment on how nothing seems to be getting done. Instead, management should be asking how they can help. Is this something that someone else could do? Do you have the bandwidth to do the task? Is there another task on your plate that I can do for you that would help you to take care of this?

People are often very fully tasked with all the things they have to take care of. Thinking that you can sneak one more thing onto their schedule without impacting all of it smacks of hubris. What if someone started adding tasks to your plate instead? I doubt you’d like that. Even if you said no, what if it was the CEO or the Chairman of the Board telling you that you had to do it? You’d probably be just as upset, especially if it was a task you couldn’t delegate.

For the people out there like me, try this next time someone asks you to do something and you’re fully tasked or unable to clear enough to accomplish it. Say “no”. Don’t explain. Don’t justify. Don’t defend. Just. Say. No. Watch the other person’s reaction. Are they getting frustrated because you’re not saying anything? Are they coming back in a helpful manner trying to understand why you declined? Or are they more upset that they now have to go find someone else to do it instead? If they come to you with respect and understanding you can tell them why you declined and are unable to help. They may offer suggestions or try to find a way to make it work. The ones that get upset are usually the ones that wouldn’t have taken “no” for an answer no matter what. They are the ones you don’t need to waste your breath on.

Tom’s Take

I will admit this post is as much for me as it is for others. I am the world’s worst for taking on additional things when I know I don’t have the bandwidth to do it all. I don’t like to disappoint. I really want to keep people happy. And instead I end up failing because I overestimate my ability to get work done and underestimate how much others could do if they knew I needed help. Next time you need to tell someone you can’t do something, don’t spend a ton of effort figuring out how to counter their eventual arguments. Just say “no” and move on. If it’s important or something that only you can do they will find a way to make it work. Otherwise, you will have saved so much more effort because you used a complete sentence instead of a needless paragraph.