On Saying No and Doing Less
“It is okay to end things. We start pilots and based on their success, we scale up, but you don’t have to scale up. Sometimes the best thing you can do is sunset a project, to end a pilot, to decide not to go further. It doesn’t have to be a failure, it just means that it would be better to devote your energy to doing something else instead.”
~Dr. Tricia Seifert, 2017 International Experiential Education Institute, Memorial University.
In December, I ran away from home. (In my head this felt like running away, in reality I told my family, took vacation days and told the people who needed to know.) I fled in an attempt to outrun my grief, and instead, ended up in quarantine, alone, where all I had was time to face myself, my fears, my grief, my dreams, my priorities, and my sadness. It was an extraordinarily painful experience that softened me and reshaped me, and weeks later, I am still thinking and processing the experience. It was nothing like the running away stories I had read in childhood. As a child I read books such as The Boxcar Children where the children lived in an abandoned rail car, got their dishes from the local dumpster, and made a swimming pool. In my favourite Enid Blyton novel, four children ran away from their families to an island where they made beds out of soft heather, a kitchen pantry in a cave, and lured a cow to their island so that they could have cold milk. (Even though I can’t have dairy, the descriptions of cold milk and butter sounded delicious.)
What it did remind me of however, was the adventure novels I was assigned in elementary school and hated. Books like The Hatchet and The Cay , featuring white male protagonists having to survive out on their own after some sort of natural disaster. I was never a fan of those books, but in my hotel room, though I wasn’t on an island, I was alone, and to stay sane I created different zones within my room. I washed my dishes in one area, I had piles of clean sheets in another, I made a dining area in another corner of the room. Instead of hunting, I used Uber Eats, creeping past the eerie sounds of the old elevator on an empty floor to retrieve my meals before rushing back to my room.
And it is this memory, and the memory of having what felt like ‘not so mild’ COVID that made me pick up “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman this week, a book that is not about productivity hacks, but rather about recognising the finitude of our lives and the importance of acting accordingly.
This newsletter is about that read, and shares the following premises of the book:
Life is finite and you cannot do everything
Because not everything is possible, it is necessary to actively choose your (few) priorities
Making those priorities possible, requires bravery and facing oneself
It is easy to forget one’s priorities and our limited time on earth. Illness can bring this realization alive, but it is hopefully possible to keep this realization alive (with continual forgetting) through practices of reminding oneself
Life is finite and you cannot do everything
According to Burkeman: “the core language of managing our limited time isn’t about how to get everything done - that’s never going to happen - but how to decide most wisely what not to do and how to feel at peace about not doing it.”1 What distracts us from a sharp sense of priorities Burkeman explains, are the priorities that seem somewhat important and worthwhile. It is those projects that make us rush and divert our attention from that which is truly important. Without choosing our priorities, everything suffers because we are not able to give any project or priority the quality of attention and time it requires.
Because not everything is possible, it is necessary to actively choose your (few) priorities
Trying to do everything is a problem. Burkeman shares a story allegedly attributed to Warren Buffett2 where he shares advice with his pilot by first asking him to list the top twenty-five things he wants to accomplish in his life, ordered by importance. After the pilot has made his list, Buffett explains that the top five are the priorities around which he must organise his time. The remaining twenty however, “aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets a chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs - because they are the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most.”3
While Burkeman doesn’t necessarily advocate for making lists of goals, the point is whether it is our professional or personal lives, we all need to become better at saying no.
When I was in high school, we all had to purchase an agenda based on 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens, which proposes a time management theory of putting one’s “big rocks” or priorities, first into the week, so that the smaller items will fit around them. It always stressed me out, and Burkeman explains that this process doesn’t work because “the critical question isn’t how to differentiate between activities that matter and those that don’t, but rather what to do when far too many things feel at least somewhat important, and therefore arguably qualify as big rocks.”4
Which brings us back to saying no - a word that is hard to say when it comes to equity work because every potential project has value, and could potentially create deeper inclusion, equity and justice in the world. And yet when it comes to doing equity work being willing to say no is vital to successfully bringing about systems change and social good. You need to have clear criteria a project must meet before you say yes, because there will never be a time when things are calm enough to suddenly make time for the most important things. Burkeman emphasizes that we falsely labour under the belief that if we just “clear the decks” and get things done, things will ease up and change, but that is never the case. (The better you are at answering emails, the more email you’ll get for example). There will never be a time period where suddenly we have more time to focus on what really matters, we must make that time now, recognising that means other, less important but still arguably valuable, projects will go to the wayside. The only way to make sure that what really matters can happen is to “decline to clear the decks, to limit the things you are currently working on and to limit projects in progress.”5
Making those priorities possible, requires bravery and facing oneself
Decisions like this - where you must accept that not everything is impossible, are terrifying. Burkeman explains that this fear exists because it is scary to admit that we will not do everything, that we will not accomplish everything that we thought was possible and because our imagination and our ability to execute differ vastly from one another. We are distractible not only because of tech companies and social media but because it is uncomfortable to try and do things. (I myself have picked up my phone several times while writing this, including tweeting about how much I hate and love writing).
And yet, what is the alternative? We either face the terrifying prospect of trying to do what really matters or floating, never really committing to anything, not being an active participant in choosing our own priorities.
Illness can remind us of our short time on earth
Illness, or serious life moments can help. In Four Thousand Weeks, the author notes:
“This is the kernel of wisdom in the cliche of the celebrity who claims that a brush with cancer was “the best thing that ever happened” to them: it pitches them into a more authentic way of being, in which everything suddenly feels more vividly meaningful. Such accounts sometimes give the impression that people reliably become happier as a result of facing the truth about death, which isn’t the case; “happier” is clearly the wrong word for the new depth that is added to life when you grasp, deep in your bones, that you’re going to die and that your time is therefore severely limited. But things certainly do get realer. [..]
“In case this needs saying, it isn’t that a diagnosis of terminal illness or a bereavement, or any other encounter with death is somehow good, or desirable, or “worth it.” But such experiences, however wholly unwelcome, often appear to leave those who undergo them in a new and more honest relationship with time. The question is whether we might attain at least a little of that same outlook in the absence of agonizing loss.”6
This observation resonates. In December I had a miscarriage, the latest in a long string of losses. My losses are punctuated by years, and each time, the emotional and physical pain has been a clarifying, life-shaking event. I don’t think I could ever say I’m glad they happened, but I can acknowledge each one ushered in a new state of being. While I am still deep in that grief, and still discovering what the implications of this loss will be, it has made me think about my own priorities and how the pieces of my life fit together.
It has made me think about what it means to face grief, my own dreams, and assess whether I am devoting enough time to the things that matter to me. I have been thinking recently about one of my favourite interviews with Hasan Minhaj where he describes his journey with comedy and making a calculation when he started out his comedy career about what he needed to keep himself afloat. In his case, that number was $400 a month, and he knew he could do that (this is pre-marriage and kids), so he kept plugging away, knowing that he could hustle to keep his dream going. Making a different calculation, for example, taking a job because it helps you meet your life responsibilities, seems equally valid, the point is to make the calculation. An instagram post by the podcast “The Double Shift” highlighted this point as well - we cannot have all things. Since we cannot do everything, we must decide what it is we want to do.
Favourites from this week:
Dollface Season 2: Streaming on Crave, this second season is an entertaining exploration of what it means to go for the job, the life, the friendships that are meaningful and not just “sufficiently interesting.” I watched this as background television this week and enjoyed it.
To read:
Q and A with Jarrett Martineau:
I loved reading this interview with Jarrett Martineau, the new Curator in Residence at the Chan Center, and found so many gems in it - both in terms of new music to listen to, and wisdom to apply to my own work. Learning about Jarrett’s musical curiosity (some of my favourites Arooj Aftab, Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan are on this list) and his continual hunger to “seek out inspiration everywhere” helped me reflect on key practices that sustain my own work. The reminders of the “mutuality and patience” required in long-term change and the relationships predicated on “trust, respect and generosity” were helpful reminders that being rooted and having curiosity about the practices and traditions of others is key to excellence. And beyond disciplinary curiosity, being open to the world and its magic is important, As an equity practitioner, living in the world, cultivating friendships, seeking joy, being grounded, reading and learning are all things that help support my practice. This interview was a reminder of that.
Misfits: A Personal Manifesto by Michaela Coel:
This week I read Michaela Coel’s book “Misfits”, in which she writes about an exercise in class where students had to publicly indicate whether their family owned a house or not, and where she found herself the only person without one:
“Had land-owning taken over my race? Why did this class exercise even exist? I thought and then blogged about it. Not about how hard it was not owning a house; I wrote about the resilience born from having no safety net at all, having to climb ladders with no stable ground beneath you.[..] I told people to keep climbing, for the love of it, whatever the craft, not because of financial profit or safety.
What is “safety”? I wrote that such circumstances can leave you feeling destined for defeat, or it could do something else; it could breed a determination, a relentless pursuit of one’s dreams that no safe man could ever replicate.”7
Four Thousand Weeks, p.71
I should say, it feels strange sharing advice from Warren Buffett.
Four Thousand Weeks, p.77
Four Thousand Weeks, p.73
Four Thousand Weeks, p.50
Four Thousand Weeks, p.64-65
Misfits, p.44.