Time Management...just say no

Hi There,

And welcome to the world of client X. Now client X works freelance for three organsiations, and also has time to write a novel which is his personal passion. Now the issue for client X is time management, learning how to prioritise and knowing how to say 'no'.Client X is a polite person and finds it hard to say no, especially to work. For three years client X built up his business by saying yes to every peice of work that came along and that was fine. But now this was getting in the way of writing the novel and this was a problem.

The solution was simple, client X could not say no because she valued being polite and respectful and felt that saying no could be taken the wrong way and even come across as being rude. Now client Y has only two choices when it comes to accepting more work, be polite and say yes, or say no and risk loosing clients and appearing rude. After exploring a bit further we found that this politeness issue has also adverly affected her romantic life whereby she found it hard to say no to guys who wanted to ask her out on a date. Now this was getting serious!

What client Y was not aware of was that there was a third option....being respectful and straightforward. Now you might think reading this that it is so obvious. Not so to client Y who really had to prcess this new possibility.Now just to make sure that client Y was going to seriously consider and utilise this new possibility in her life I gave her some homework. The homework was to once a day say something that felt respectful, in integrity, and a little uncomfortable. This could be saying yes to something in a more affirming way than she was used to or saying no to something.

Now being a thorough coach I have asked client Y to email me after 10 days to let me know how she is getting on with this homework.

Blessings
Steve Nobel