Learning to Say: ENOUGH ALREADY!
I am finding as I age and am able to pursue interests and work that feeds some deeper part of myself, I am more ready to walk away from tasks that are distracting from the path I am on. I have been willing to shoulder responsibilities associated with the broad umbrellas of leadership. Colleagues holding similar leadership roles to mine and I would often joke that the most burdensome line of our job descriptions was “All other duties as assigned.”
My point here is that I don’t mind working hard. But I do mind doing someone else’s work when they are in fact capable of doing it. I’m told that as we age we become “More-So,” a phrase that I take to mean that whatever inklings or traits we have carried with us on our adult journeys become even more noticeable.
In a paid work environment, one doesn’t always have the luxury of walking away from a task assigned by a supervisor, even if it is a task that should be carried out by someone else who is paid to do it. But as I have gained more control over how I spend my time, I am gaining greater clarity about what I’m willing to take on and what I’m not.
One of the things we figure out as we go through life is that people have different degrees of willingness to assume responsibility for their part of a project. A good illustration of this notion is observing how people meet deadlines. When I served as the Vice President of the Academic Division within colleges, I was responsible for compiling budgets for all of the divisions and centers that reported to me. It didn’t take me long to realize which directors I could count on to submit their materials on time, and which I had to chase.
Chasing people for their input is time consuming, and without all parts of a required project in hand, completion of the final outcome is delayed. One person’s negligence has a cascading impact on many peoples’ work and time. It is the repeat offenders that I find difficult to deal with. I understand that there are going to be occasional situations where other factors in our lives may mean that we are delayed in fulfilling our obligations.
The challenge of figuring out how to deal with non-responses can occur in volunteer work as well. When I volunteered to run a fund-raising event for my Parish, in consultation with the Steering Committee for the event, we set guidelines of when each element of the planning process had to be finalized. We needed estimates from the cost centers that anticipated expenses to be submitted by a specific date so that we could determine a ticket price for admission that would cover expenses and yield a profit.
I and others ended up having to chase after folks to get the required information that we needed. Pursing people to submit their piece of the puzzle is both time-consuming and aggravating. It may not seem like a lot of time to make a phone call or compose an email, but it is time and energy taken away from other projects one could be working on.
It’s interesting to consider the phrase “spending time.” My most frequent use of the word, “spend,” is used with how I choose to utilize my financial resources. I’m betting that most of us would agree that “time is one of our most precious resources.” When we have to use our time to chase others to do their part, if we stopped to think about it as “we are being asked to throw our time away,” we might better understand why we feel resentful.
I’ve reached a point in my life that when I’m involved in a situation in which there are set deadlines to be met, I don’t follow up with people that haven’t responded. Sometimes there are others in the group that volunteer to chase people, but I’m not one of them. I used to privately question if I was less generous or gracious because of my position, but I’ve come to accept my response as valid.
I’ve learned that once some people realize that others will continue to enable them to be less responsible, they come to expect that they will be afforded multiple second chances. This enabling comes at a cost to all involved.
I am putting effort into learning how I want to use my time in this phase of my life. I am learning to say “Enough Already” or “No” to any requests that I feel are not a good use of my time. Learning to say “No” is a necessity if we want to pursue life-giving activities that are important to us. Granted, one can be gracious in declining to participate in such events. I believe it is possible to be both gracious in declining as well as sharing why you are choosing not to. When asked in committee work if we should each reach out to the people on the list who haven’t responded by the deadline, it’s easy enough to explain that the deadline was made clear with adequate time to respond.
If we want to live our lives according to some goals and visions that we have set in place, it follows that we have to carefully choose how we spend our time.
If you find yourself feeling angry that you have agreed to do something that is cutting into your time, pay attention. The anger may be useful in realizing that you need to be more discerning before agreeing to take on a task. Perhaps others will benefit from our modeling the importance of how we spend our allotted resources, whether it is our money or our time!
