"Just say no." That seems simple enough, right? But apparently, that word doesn't come very naturally to me. Maybe it's due to the fact that I thrive on being busy or the fact that I love being everyone's go-to-girl, but I really have a hard time saying "no". Over the past couple of weeks though, I have realized that I can't do it all. I hate to admit that, but it's true. Between working and studying, I really don't have much time to do anything else. I got an email this morning at work from one of the project managers asking if another guy or I had time to do some research on a topic for this afternoon's meeting. The project manager had sent the email to the entire project team, and my first reaction was to hope that the other guy had time so that I didn't have to actually say "no", but after hearing that he wasn't available, I knew I had to do the unthinkable. I responded to the group that I didn't have time and that I agreed with one engineers when he said that we should look into consulting someone with more expertise in such a specialized area. I'll admit that I was a little hesitant to respond with "no", but to my surprise, it worked. They assigned the task to someone else, and I was able to continue working on what I was already doing. The icing on the cake was the response that I received from one of the senior engineers on the project: "Hey kid - way to go!!! Seriously, that e-mail took a combination of guts and intelligence - something that sadly I didn't have when I was early in my career!"
I think it's safe to say that I'm gonna start using the word "no" a lot more often. "Just say no." Maybe it really is that simple.
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