🙅‍♂️ Setting boundaries at work

Wanting to help is admirable. But we cannot spread ourselves thin for the sake of helping others.

Saying “no” is hard.

It's often easier to agree to something, even if it's outside of our job description or doesn't fit on our calendar. We believe that we can simply agree, get the task done, receive thanks, and then feel like a hero. But it doesn't work like that.

I recently had to walk back some tasks with clients that were outside of the agreed upon scope of work. While I wanted to help, I wasn't in a position to take on additional services I had little or no experience in. But I did!

I quickly realized my mistake when I found myself working in half a dozen applications I had never used. And this was in addition to my usual work load. It was a mess.

Wanting to help is admirable. But we cannot spread ourselves thin for the sake of helping others. Our goal isn't to do an okay job at everything, but to do a great job at what we specialize in.

For everything else, we may need to say “no.”