Whether you’re a chronic people-pleaser, place a lot of value in ‘doing everything’ or are trying to prove yourself in a new workplace, it’s tempting to say ‘yes’ to absolutely everything without much thought. 

Can you pick up this massive task that will take you all day? Sure! Will you stay late, again, to make sure this gets done? Yep! Could you make me a tea, organise your co-worker’s leaving gift and join that meeting on your day off, too? Absolutely, no problem. 

There are some obvious problems with this pattern. For one thing, you can’t actually do absolutely everything that’s asked of you. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. If you attempt to do this, that’s a surefire path to burnout. 

Plus, you shouldn’t be doing all the things that pop up. You’re paid to do a certain job, which likely lines up with your expertise and experience. When you’re constantly being asked to do things that fall out of this remit, you aren’t using your time and energy in a way that makes the most of your skills. 

When these issues are raised, the advice tends to be pretty simple: just say ‘no’. But that can feel more than a little tricky, especially as you first dip your toe into the ‘setting boundaries’ pool. 

Perhaps a better way to ease yourself in? Slowing down your yes. 

In a post to LinkedIn, keynote speaker and coach Ronan Harrington offered some words of wisdom: “Boundary setting isn’t about saying no, it’s about slowing down your yes.

“It means resisting your instinct to immediately say yes as a default to requests of your time,” Harrington tells Stylist. “To slow down your yes is to take the time you need to check in with your capacity [to determine] whether this latest task is something you can or even want to do – if you have that option.

“In practice, it can be as simple as taking a breath and checking in with yourself, and then saying yes. If you need more time or a false sense of urgency is pressuring you to say yes, use deferring statements to move the decision until a later time. You can say: ‘Let me check my schedule and come back to you,’ or ‘I’d like to sleep on it and give you an answer in the morning.’ Then when you’ve eventually come to a decision, you can be confident this is a task you can commit to – or not.” 

Why is this important? It’s simple: saying ‘yes’ to a bunch of stuff we can’t actually do (or can only do at the cost of our wellbeing) isn’t good for us, it isn’t good for our work, and it isn’t good for anyone else, either. 

“Too often we say yes to requests we cannot actually do, so we either compromise our health to get it done or we fail to do it, break an agreement and create stress in our working relationships,” Harrington explains. “When a yes is actually a no, everyone eventually loses.

“If we say yes to requests as a default, it’s likely we are going to go beyond our capacities, and we will eventually feel the consequences of this in terms of overwhelm and burnout. We need a skilful way of navigating our needs for health, work-life balance and career progression, which are often in conflict. The best way to do that is to create more space around the decision by slowing down our yes.

“It’s also important because if we say yes to everything then nothing is a priority. We need space and time to discern where the latest request sits within our basket of priorities, and our companies need employees who have this capacity. If we don’t have a decision-making process, we end up always busy but ineffective.”

Slowing down your yes is an essential tool in feeling more in control of your workload. It’s also the first step in unlearning the tendency to always, automatically say yes. When you slow down, sure, you might end up saying yes, but at least you’ve given yourself some space to think about it. Once you recognise that you’re allowed to take that time, you’re on your way to understanding that you can say ‘no’, too.

What does slowing down your yes look like in practice? It’s not about just taking ages to reply to an email (your boss might not appreciate the silent treatment), but instead being clear that you’re taking a pause before you say whether or not you can do something. 

When someone asks you to join a meeting, for example, rather than automatically saying, ‘Sure thing!’, you might say: “Let me look at my calendar for tomorrow and my workload and let you know if this is possible.” If a request comes in, you could say: “Give me a few minutes to think about that and I’ll get back to you.” 

Does the idea of even slowing down your response fill you with anxiety? Don’t panic. It’s a practice that may take some time to perfect. Harrington suggests trying it out first “in safe settings with requests that aren’t urgent or important”.

He recommends: “Say to your partner, housemates or a close friend: ‘I’m working on not saying yes immediately as a default, and I’d love your support as I do this.’ You can then start slowing down your yes to requests where the stakes are low, such as an invitation to a party or helping with a task around the house.

“Be with the discomfort of people waiting on you. Realise that most requests have a false sense of urgency, and enjoy taking your time. As we grow this muscle, we can then start applying it with our parents or at work with our peers and then start practising it with our boss and eventually a client we’ve developed a good relationship with. You want your first experiences of this to be positive, so it’s all about discernment.”

In tricky moments when your brain is crying out to you to just say yes and snatch up any request that comes your way, remind yourself of why you’re engaging in this practice. 

“The prize of slowing down your yes is greater sovereignty and freedom,” Harrington notes. “You can be confident that what you are doing feels good for you, and, in turn, the people around you can be sure that you will follow through on your commitments.

“The irony is that when we are operating more from our centre, people feel that power. Even if you say no to them, they respect you more. Who would have thought you could climb the career ladder by doing less?”

Images: Getty; Stylist