August 9, 2021

Below is a lesson from Alexis Haselberger on time management, as well as our key learnings.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

How To Say No

By: Alexis Haselberger

I’m sure you’ve heard the advice that you should get better as saying no. But it’s easier said than done. And it’s absolutely necessary if you want to curate your time so that you are spending it in service of your own goals and values.

When it comes to time-management, we can either do less, or do what we’re doing more efficiently. A lot of advice out there (my own included) is about ways that we can be more efficient and squeeze as much as we can out of each moment. However, the other side of the coin is the ability to say no to the things that don’t serve us, so that we have the available time and energy to say yes to the things that do.

And to get started, there are really only two questions to ask ourselves with respect to reducing what’s on our plate: 1) what am I going to say yes (or no) to in the future? and 2) what am I doing now that I don’t want to be doing?

Continue Reading Here.

Key Learnings:

• Most of us feel pressure to say “yes” and we don’t think about our time and priorities, and we get stretched too thin.
• It’s okay to take a moment, a breath, a sleep on it to think if the thing is something you should yes to.
• There are tactical ways to say “no” to something.
• Sometimes gilt is associated with saying no – but it’s better to say it up front then to bail on a project or person.
• You need to take stock of your obligations and think about actions to take to remove the obligations that you wish you had said no to or that’s not working anymore.
• There are three action you can take to remove obligations from your life: Extract, Delegate, Outsource
• An action plan is crucial to helping you to initiate the action to get rid of the obligation you no longer want in your life.