There has to be this pivotal moment or point where you sit there and you start saying no to things. Because if you don't, you're just going to keep saying yes throughout your whole career. And as you become more experienced and senior, saying yes to everything is going to be to your detriment. Hello, and welcome to the PY Bytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldeboz. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Right. Welcome. Welcome to another Pie Bytes podcast episode. Bob, how's it going? It's going well, thank you. How are you today? No, no, I'm kidding. So, I'm good. I'm good. And that. That's a nice segue into our topic of the day. Today we are talking. He's hinting at us. Today we're talking about saying no. So the first thing I'll clarify is that we're not talking about just randomly yelling no at people. That would not go down very well. So, Bob, why don't you explain what we mean by saying no? No. Just kidding. In this information overloaded age, there are just so many requests on your time, and it's very easy to say yes to a lot of things, and then you're spread too thin. So we wanted to talk today about how to say no to more things so that you free up time to work on the things that really matter towards your goals. Yep. And it's the, you know, perfect follow on to the things we've been talking about. We've been talking about goal setting and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, one of the biggest spanners for your goals and working towards the things that you want is people, you know, people jumping in and actually reprioritizing your schedule for you. So, you know, Bob, is one of the favorite things you've shown me over the years is this quote. You know, if you don't say no, others will determine your schedule for you. And that was. Yeah, that was really powerful. And I've definitely remembered that every day. So I don't like other people controlling my schedule. I'm very strict about that. Yep. And it's important to keep in mind that there's always a trade off. Like, you cannot do everything sometimes. I found that trap thinking, like, I can take on more and more and more and. And it's just not true. You have to make choices and saying no is a great way to set boundaries, which is really necessary to prevent burnout and to live kind of a balanced life. Yeah, that one's really true. Because if you think about the planning and the time audit and the things that we talk about every now and then, you never actually take note of why you were doing those things or who asked you to do those things or what was the purpose behind it. And if you get to the end of the day and you wonder what happened to my time, not only should you look at what you were doing, but you should look at who was asking you to do it, because you find that there is a trade off. The second you accept work from someone else, no matter how much you think you can fit it into your schedule, something else is going to suffer, even if it is just yourself, personal time, your private time. Yeah. So ideally, you should always go back to your goals and see if it's relevant, right? Yeah, exactly. Right. And one of the unknown things, or I guess the things that people don't really realize is that when you say no, it actually wins you respect. You know, if you think about every time at work, you might have asked someone to help with something or if they can participate in a project, whatever it is, and the people that say no, you actually tend to sit there and think, wow, I wish I could say no, or, geez, they must be busy, or I don't, maybe you don't understand why, but the reality is it's because they're respecting their time and the projects and their customers, their deliverables, clients, whatever, and they're making sure they can do their best work. Yeah. And this is also a bit tricky. Right. Because in our culture we are often. You're applauded if you're always available and you have an instance response. I guess I fall trapped to that. I like to respond fast, but it has a price in that you're causing more interruptions. And as a developer, you need a lot of deep work. So there's a great tension between those two. So, yeah, it's hard to say no, I'm the first one to admit it. But on the other hand, some people might assume that you lose popularity or you come off as a bad person, whatever, but it actually shows character. It shows that you have a clear vision of your goals and that you're focusing on the big things and you're right, that wins respect. Yeah. It also shows you're respecting them as well. Right. Because by saying no, you know that they're not going to get you doing a rubbish job. I was trying to choose a politically correct word. They're a rubbish job on their task. You don't want to show up and, you know, not impress them. So, yeah, let's jump in then to some tips on how you can say no. So why don't you take the first one? Yeah. So it's very easy to get excited about something people propose to you and dive straight in. Awesome, let's have a chat about it. Let's grab a coffee, maybe pause a little bit, think it through and say, cool, but let me think about it. Win yourself some time. Give your emotional brain a little bit of space to calm down, and maybe after an hour you're not that excited anymore because you have kind of matched it against your goals and it was not the most important thing. So it's very easy to jump on things but pause and reflect for a moment. I like that because it's a habit, a bad habit of all of us to just say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. You know, and by just saying that, you're almost talking yourself into it. And then you have buyer's remorse on the other side. They've walked away going, yes, I've got my patsy to help me with the job. And you sit there and go, crap. I had five other things to deliver, so you got to make sure you stop saying yes straight away and just pause. And that actually jumps into the next one quite well. Let me check my calendar. Let me get back to you. Those are the sorts of things you should say. That's the way to pause. That's a great way to pause. Not only pause while you're in front of them, but get away from the person to get some physical space and not be stuck in that conversation where you feel you have to give an answer. No one needs an answer on the spot. That's just a fallacy that there is a demand or a deadline at that very moment. The fact that they're asking you means that they have time, because if you say no, they're going to go ask someone else. Right. So always say, let me get back to you. Let me check my calendar because it shows that you're interested. It shows that maybe there's some you can participate later, but the reality is you're not committing to it now. And that's the key part because maybe it is something you want to do, but give it time. Check to see if you can actually do it. Yep. And another tip is to show the trade off. So if you were asked, for example, by your manager or your boss to do something that you think doesn't really make sense or is not in the best interest of the overall goal. You can say, for example, okay, that's cool. What thing should I drop in order to do this? And then the trade off becomes more apparent and maybe your manager will take it back. If that means that you're delayed on an important feature, well, then there's some pain there, right? So you can use that. That's a really good one. It puts the onus on them. Right? So same vein, delegate. This is a really great one. Obviously, if you're a manager, there is a possibility you can delegate in the traditional sense, which is pick someone from your team and give them the task, but you're exacerbating the problem. So when I say delegate, I mean think of someone in earnest who might actually benefit from doing the work. So if you're in an office, everyone wants exposure. Everyone wants opportunity to look good, to shine, and to, you know, impress. Management, leadership, the teammates, whoever it is. While you might be the expert, you can't be the expert in everything. So a really strong quality, a real leadership quality for you to have is to say, you know what? I'm not the right person for this, but Bob is. Bob could do that in half the time that I could do it. Now, he might be busy, but go and ask him. He's a much better person to do this, to take on this opportunity. He would love the chance at it. Perhaps if you know Bob personally, you might know that he's wanting the exposure, perhaps for a promotion or something. Think about your network like that at work. And think about how delegating or recommending someone else for the task might actually benefit everyone. And then it's win, win, win. The task owner gets someone, that delegate gets work that they want, and you don't have to take care of it, and you look good in the process. That's awesome. That's a great tip. So the other thing I want to mention, you need to fix this early in the pipeline because if you're getting a lot of requests, that might mean that you have set the wrong expectation. So this is kind of a double edged one, like for yourself, having a clear schedule for the week where you wrapped your goals in tangible action items and planned them out. You know what your day is going to look like. So you already have that wall up for yourself. But to the outside world, it could mean like, block time off of your calendar or let your team know what times of the day you're in deep work so you won't be on slack, for example. So that's all like sending expectations and preventing certain requests to even come through. So fix it early in the pipeline. Yeah, definitely a great tip, that one, because there are lots of companies out there where you can just book time in people's calendars. You can see their availability. All right, the last thing I want to cover off before we jump into a story each, we love our story time. The other big thing that a lot of people fail to realize is that accepting work and then saying not saying no, so saying yes too much, it results in more multitasking, you know, because you commit to too much and you start to sit there and say, yeah, I can take this on while I do this in parallel, or I'll join your meeting. Yes. And then you can find yourself in one of those situations where you're sitting in a meeting, reading email, doing your email. And are you really committing your full focus to either task? Not really, because you're trying to listen, but also trying to write a well formed email. So overall, it's just, it's, to use our favorite word, insidious, just say no more often. Don't accept the work that will overload you because. Yeah, the multitasking is a bad thing. Yeah. If you're writing code while in the meeting, maybe you should revisit this theme. Yeah, listen. Or if you're listening to this podcast in a meeting, we'll actually, you know, that's. Never mind, we won't touch that one. All right, listen on it. On your walks. Yeah, listen while you're walking. See, that's fine. That's good multitasking. That's good multitasking. Yeah. All right, so let's jump into a story. You go first. Story time. So being a software developer, right, your python is super important, knowing design patterns and all that. But what I'm really, and I think the reason why we are doing this episode is saying no. And the leadership skills are as important, if not more important. And an example is that many times people on the project, project managers, whoever came up and thought that certain features had to be built or certain enhancements, and being closer to the code and the impact on the users, you'd know that some of these things should not be built or should be done differently. So then it's really time to push back. So once I was coding feature, and it was really in the wrong microservice in the architectures, and it was just time to pause and reflect and push back. Like, let's do this differently in the sake of getting the thing done in time. So, yeah, saying no is very important to kind of avoid a bad design and to make sure that features implemented the best way possible and then just don't be scared to speak up. And that's another nice bias, the suncast bias, to accept that you might have to throw away some work to get to the better solution. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's great because. And that I would have hoped would have won you a lot of respect, you know, to say no, not going to happen. There was definitely some work done in this scenario, but continuing that work, there would have been risk of writing something that would not perform that well. So, like, taking that loss was a good example for me to say no for the greater benefit. And, you know, that's, that's a really good tip because one thing we haven't pointed out is sometimes people are looking to you to say no. So in that instance. Right. Who. I mean, this is way past the time that you were doing that. But just thinking about it, the project managers, they're not technical. Even technical project managers, they're not as technical as the people doing the actual work. So they might come to you with an completely unrealistic deadline or item, action item, and they're sort of relying on you to say, sorry, that's not feasible, or at least not right now, not in that timeframe that you have. And you might be that expert who can say that's not going to happen or that's going to result in a sub par product or something. So, yeah, there you go. Really, really good tip there. I like that one. Good story. What about you? All right, so here's my one. My own runs into that reprioritized tip that you mentioned earlier. And I think I'll call it out here. When you're starting in your career, you tend to say yes to everything, and there has to be this pivotal moment or point where you sit there and you start saying no to things, because if you don't, you're just going to keep saying yes throughout your whole career. And as you become more experienced and senior, saying yes to everything is going to be to your detriment because you can't take care of all that. The tasks are no longer simple, menial tasks. They're now more in depth tasks that take months to complete. So you really need to defend your time there. And for me, one of those moments was in one of my earlier roles not that long ago, but one of my previous roles. You know, I can't say exactly what it was, but I had a full plate. I had so many tasks on my plate that I was already struggling, you know, just because it was new to me, stuff I'd never done before. And I remember my manager coming to me and saying in an email, saying, I need you to take care of x, y, and z, take on this, take on that, lead this and whatever else. Again, I'm being intentionally vague, so forgive me, I know this sounds pretty generic, but I can't talk about the detail. The thing was, I remember feeling so overwhelmed, I had the benefit of it being emailed. But what I did was I booked time in my manager's calendar. I took the time. And then when I was speaking to my manager, I said, you know, this is great. I love that you've selected me, that you think I can take care of this. You have that confidence in me. So, you know, I was giving this positive vibe here. I said, and I would love to take it on. Here's the catch. I have this stuff on my plate as well, which you've also told me and indicated in other meetings is important. I only have so many hours in the day. What should my priority list be? And in advanced, I prepared a spreadsheet with all of my action items, all of my tasks or projects, whatever. And I then said, let's label them one through ten, or I can't remember what the numbers were, but let's label them. And I had my manager help me go through it. And then therefore we were able to push dates out on some of my other projects to accommodate. In one of the cases, we even scrapped that as an action item, and I think my manager gave it to someone else because they wanted me on the other stuff. So it really worked out to say no. In a roundabout way, it was a more of a want to do it, but if you want me to do a good job, you've got to help me reprioritize and almost give me permission as my manager and my gatekeeper here to say no and push back. Yeah. What I like about this one is that you were proactive and reached out and you put the meeting on the calendar and you were very practical about listing out and giving ABC ratings and all that. And because, you know, like the project manager example, your manager might not know how much time things take. Right. They might underestimate it. So making that visual and showing the cost of things, it's way more convincing. Yeah, no, it worked out, worked out well in the end. So, yeah, it was good. Good. Learning experience, something I haven't forgotten, because I definitely have used that ever since that tactic. So there we go. That's it, man. So, takeaways, say no to create more of the good things for yourself, which will be in line with your goals. Don't let others inevitably set your agenda. Yep, perfect. And if you happen to still be working at an office, just walk through. When people say good morning, just say no and keep walking. Was that. That was the point of this, right? All right, you take it easy, Bob. Thanks heaps. All right, man, see you in the next one. Cheers. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte, France. 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