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Time Management
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is not the most critical day of the year), then maybe you
should say no.
How to Say No
Psychologists have identified a four-step procedure that makes
saying no safe, diplomatic, and effective:
• Give a reason. To simply decline to do something seems
arbitrary, lazy, or irresponsible. If you give a good, solid rea-
son for your decision, it will show that you’re reasonable.
• Be diplomatic. Saying no can hurt, upset, or even anger
the person to whom you’re saying it. Tact is essential
when turning down anything.

Say No to Information Overload
We live in an age of information overload. But you can
control how you receive and process information by
focusing on what you need and rejecting what you don’t. Here are a
few tips:
• When reading a report, read the executive summary first. Skim what
follows only to sift out necessary details. If you can influence the
people creating reports, insist that they have executive summaries.
• Subscribe to publications that summarize facts, books, articles, etc. A
few examples:
Executive Book Summaries
Wellness Letter (UC Berkeley)
Kiplinger Washington Letter
• Avoid real-time TV viewing. Tape TV shows and fast-forward past com-
mercials.
• Use the bookmark feature on your Internet browser to store infor-
mation sites you use frequently.
• Get a voice-mail system that limits messages to one minute and does-
n’t record hang-ups. Whether or not you have a limiting feature on
your equipment, warn callers in your outgoing message that they
have 60 seconds to state their message. (Yes, they may call back and
leave a continuation of their message, but the second attempt will
be far more compact than the first.)