"Every yes is a no, every no is a yes": Tips For Lawyers From Time Management Expert Laura Vanderkam

Too often, it feels like time management tips for lawyers can just be summed up by “saying no more often”. However, this can be an oversimplification of the real challenges legal professionals face when trying to optimise their time, both at work and at home.

If you think about how you spend your hours, much is determined by commitments you have taken on over the years. Sometimes the moment of decision is obvious, sometimes less so. Sometimes the choices are constrained, and sometimes more freely made, but in any case, what we choose to say “yes” or “no” to affects the daily experience of life.

This is straightforward enough, and so many articles on time management talk about how to say “no” more frequently. Sometimes that’s wise. It’s also not the whole story, because sometimes people say “no” to things that probably deserved a “yes.” The “no” happened because the person said “yes” too many times before to smaller things, and so there appeared to be no space for the big new opportunity.

Instead, here’s a better way to think of it: "Every yes is a no, and every no is a yes". Every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. Agreeing to take calls at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on some particular day means that you won’t wind up going deep into the flow of writing. This results in the workday being chopped up. Although it might have looked like an easy yes — you were free — it is still a no to something.

Likewise a no to that 10:00 call is a yes to having an open morning. Of course, from that perspective, it sounds like all those articles are right, and it’s really about saying “no” repeatedly, but that’s debatable.

“Every yes is a no, every no is a yes”. The upside of keeping this phrase in mind is that it reminds you that expectations are infinite, and time is finite. You are always choosing. A choice to do one thing is a choice not to do something else, and therefore a choice to disappoint someone. So the question is who are you choosing to disappoint, and why?

Once you accept that you can’t meet all expectations, you can be more rational about which you choose to meet. The words “no” and “yes” become tools for choosing the right expectations, rather than having great power in and of themselves.

This article was authored by Laura Vanderkam, time management expert and author of several best selling time management and productivity books, including "Off the Clock", "I Know How She Does It", "What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast", and "168 Hours". It was originally published on her blog.