Sometimes you just have to say no

I've had a pretty full on last few days. It's budget time at work, and I have been spending a lot of my day and night time trying to get it finalised. Even now, after this post, I will need to get back to it and hopefully put it to bed.

Today out of left field, a request came in from a colleague for another report, with a very short deadline. I was stunned that I was even asked, given that everyone knows that most managers are swamped with budgets at the moment. Didn't they know I was preoccupied trying to meet my deadline?

I politely explained that we didn't have the resources to quickly assemble the information they were looking for, and returned to my budget.

The request came again, albeit slightly modified to make it easier to achieve, and I felt under pressure to somehow find a way to get it done, which to be honest made me feel quite stressed.

Rather than dance around it again, I got straight to the point. "I don't have the time for this because I am doing the budget. I can only do your report, or our 5 year budget, not both, and I am choosing the budget. Sorry."

I waited for the push back, or raised voices insisting I drop what I was doing and put the report together...

Thankfully though, they got the message and left me alone.

What's the point of this post? Sometimes you just have to be upfront, and rather than try to defer a request politely, demonstrate that you can't do it right now. You save the additional time of having to refuse it a second (or even a third) time, and you make it clear that you are busy on something important and the interupter will hopefully leave you alone.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my budget...

Later.