Issue #017 — Six months of saying no

Dear reader,

I have been keeping a small private log this year of every time I said no to something.

I started it in January, mostly as an experiment. Six months in, it is the most useful document I own.

The shape of it is plain. A line per no. The thing, the date, the reason, in a few words. Coffee with X — dropping the maintenance social calendar. Speaking gig, free, distant city — not the right audience and the math does not work. Group chat, new — already in three. Project from a kind ex-colleague — I would resent it by week three.

The thing the log has done is unexpected. I assumed it would make me feel guilty. It has done the opposite. The log proves, in writing, that I am not selfish; I am simply finite. Every no is in service of a yes elsewhere — to the work I actually came here to do, to the people I am actually present with, to the rest I require to remain a person.

It also surfaces patterns I would not have seen. Six months in I can see, plainly, that I am bad at saying no to anyone who frames a request as urgent. I can see that I say yes too often to old colleagues out of a kind of nostalgic loyalty that is not actually love, just history. I can see that the requests I most resent saying no to are the ones I should have said no to faster, because the resentment is the tell.

If you find saying no hard — most of the people I admire do, including the ones who have learned to do it — keep the log. You do not have to share it with anyone. You are not building a manifesto. You are giving yourself the receipts.

In six months, the receipts will mean more than any framework about boundaries. The framework gets you to the door. The receipts let you walk through it without flinching.

Yours,
Enova