“Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”
~ Marcus Aurelius
Summer is a great time to reflect on the last academic year. As you do, consider, for a moment, all the things you were “voluntold” to do beyond your formal job description. Were they truly aligned with the institution’s mission and supportive of your career?
Was the number of tasks you accepted within your capacity to work during normal business hours to your high standards? Were they sufficiently resourced, and did you have sufficient autonomy and authority to get them done well? Did you end the semester feeling revitalized by the experience of working sustainably and in line with your values?
Your answer to these questions could be the essence of your time management strategy next semester. That is, if you answered, “no,” perhaps “no” should be a greater part of that strategy.
Saying No: A Function of Self-Care and Autonomy
Resisting excessive or unaligned extra work can be good for your career and mental health. In his most recent book, Slow Productivity, Cal Newport recommends that knowledge workers do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality. Doing fewer things at a humane pace reduces the overhead and overwhelm of constantly switching tasks and the stress of spreading ourselves too thin.
According to self-determination theory, when we focus on the tasks that align with the college’s mission and our values, we create a motivating sense of autonomy and purpose. Doing fewer things better is inherently rewarding and builds our sense of competence.
Moreover, thoughtfully critical responses to requests for additional work can be good for your colleagues, department chairs, and the institution. For example, when normalized, critical responses support gender equity. Research suggests that women are not just more likely to be asked to perform “non-promotable” tasks beyond their job description (think taking notes or organizing events); they are also more likely to agree. Indeed, a culture that encourages critical responses also supports all systemically vulnerable colleagues, especially junior, contingent, and minoritized.
Even managers benefit by better understanding the capacities and competencies of their staff, while improving performance and morale. Finally, faculty marginally less willing to perform uncompensated labor may help motivate successful conclusion of a long delayed collective bargaining agreement with CUNY.
So, Why Not Just Say No?
While critical responses to task requests are important for everyone, this is easier said than done. We need to acknowledge, with self-compassion, how difficult it can be to say no.
We want to protect our professional relationships and our reputation for competency and productivity. We naturally discount the future cost of the new task and prefer to avoid conflict in the present moment. We want to do what we perceive others are doing, even if that’s self-defeating. We are averse to the ambiguity of the consequences of pushing back.
Moreover, administrators, department chairs, and even colleagues deploy effective strategies to make refusals or negotiations more difficult. They make their requests publicly. They add us to teams without warning. They invite us to meetings and add us to projects with senior people to make it embarrassing to decline. If they offer a choice, they apply pressure to decide quickly. Giving special power to these approaches: the university keeps promotion and reappointment criteria vague and budgets in perpetual crisis.
How to Say No: Real-World Strategies
With our effectiveness and autonomy at stake, how do we overcome these challenges? We can start with creating a personal policy or set of decision rules.
Start with deepest held values as humans, citizens, and professionals. How can you add greatest value–sustainably–in your role at work? Create a checklist of criteria to consider when opportunities or requests come up. This will help you remember to think through the consequences, ambiguities, and moral dimensions.
With these broad strategies in mind, you can then experiment with different tactics. Observe what seems to work for others. When presented with an opportunity or request, you may see people:
- Appeal to personal identity: When refusing, provide reasons relating to your identity and values, not external reasons. This can be more persuasive.
- Delay: Ask to consider the request and respond by a future date (and privately). Often, the need for the request just evaporates in the meantime.
- Manage up: If the requester is a manager, ask for help prioritizing and postponing existing tasks given time and resource constraints.
- Request added payment, reassigned time, etc: This puts an explicit value on your time and clarifies the task’s importance.
- Negotiate scope, timing, and resources: In some cases, you can make an impossible request possible.
- Appeal to fairness or competence: If the request is unfair or if there are others better placed to perform the task, say so.
- Increase friction: make it less convenient for a request to be made in the first place by reducing responsiveness over email or limiting certain in-person encounters.
- Support each other: Share experiences with colleagues and friends; hold each other accountable.
The Bottom Line
The central irony is that, to do our teaching and research jobs better, smarter, and more sustainably, we may need to say no more often. When we say yes to the wrong things, we have to say no to the right things.
Investing some time in developing an authentic strategy and daily tactics to handling opportunities and requests, and committing to implementing these, can have powerful long-term and tangible benefits to yourself and your institution.
Brett Whysel is a full-time lecturer in the Business Management Department at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. There, he teaches Managerial Decision-Making (Writing Intensive), Introduction to Finance, and Financial Management, all asynchronously and in person. He has been teaching at BMCC since 2019. Prior to that, he was an adjunct lecturer at the City College of New York in the MPA program.
Brett is the co-founder of Decision Fish LLC, which creates social impact by helping people make better decisions with financial wellness programs, consulting, public speaking, and coaching.
Before transitioning to higher education, he had a 27-year career in public finance investment banking. This included bond structuring, lending, derivatives, risk analytics, research, management, and training. Brett has a master’s degree in philosophy from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in managerial economics and French from Carnegie Mellon University. He has earned three teaching certificates from ACUE.