Say "No" List - DBR 056

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

We're looking at burnout, overwork, these kinds of things. They are a clear indication that we’re doing busy wrong and I don’t like that. I’m going to talk about one way to combat the problem. How to decline work assignments. But we talk about burnout, we talk about work life balance, we talk about all these challenges that we face around our level of busy in the modern workplace. And I think those challenges have a single primary cause - how we accept work assignments. We need a system that helps us say "No" Burnout and modern work culture

• Cause of burnout is the work culture – the ‘amount of work’ problem
• We don't have a clear sense of the quality of knowledge work; higher amount of effort
• We’re better at controlling the amount of physical work
• The physical job world went through a similar set of things.
• There's nothing magical about 40 hours a week.
• I agree with Cal at this point, that's not the number of hours, it's the number of projects.

Recommendation(s)

• So how do we deal with the number of projects?
• They’re not going to stop coming, so we need to focus on the “at one time” part
• Make work visible
• Cal's recommendation is basically you manage your work in a kanban system

Accepting or declining new work requests

• The challenge that most people face – accepting or declining new work requests.
• We need to take the responsibility, even out of just sheer self defense
• We have to have a current, prioritized, boss-vetted list of projects.
• But the whole point for workflows and tool set is to have a list and to
• maintain the list.
• You're losing in the workplace because you don't have this list. You're completely unarmed.

You’ve got to implement a system to manage your own work

• Your boss, organization, or customers are not going to do it for you.
• The most basic requirement of such a system - you need a full picture of what you're doing.
• Having and managing a complete picture of what you're doing is a huge challenge in the modern workplace. Get a system in place.
• Attention compass is the work management system that produces a good list.

How you would use a list – how a list solves the problem

• If your system doesn't support you saying no to stuff, then you're going to wind up saying yes more often than you think
• James Clear - "you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your system". So get a system
• You have to be able to say to the boss, oh, here's the priority list that WE developed.
• It's an ongoing conversation with your boss. But it depends on a decent list

How can you create a list? What tool?

• We've got to have a list, and we've got to be able to pull it up. That's attention compass
• How does the attention compass provide this list – a backlog
• The backlog provides all these benefits for us.
• There's lots of moving parts to the backlog - part of the process is teach you how to do a backlog.

Cal recommended a Kanban - a backlog versus a Kanban?

• Pull systems are more efficient than push systems – push systems accumulate project-level overhead
• Kanban is great - work in progress limits
• Once you have a backlog, turn it into a Kanban - here's how.