- No, that was easy.
(mellow contemporary music)
Hey there, welcome back to Amy TV.
We talk a lot about focus around here
and making sure that we stick with our plan
and do the things that we gotta do
but constantly, it seems,
people are asking for our attention
in so many different ways.
They're getting really creative.
So I thought it'd be interesting today
to talk about the ways that you can say no
in order to separate yourself from someone
when they're asking for your attention
and it is not the right time for it.
Yes, you get to make that decision,
isn't that interesting?
Before we get started,
make sure you subscribe to this channel.
I make new videos every Sunday and Wednesday
and I would love to see you back for the next one.
Let's start with the easy ones, the digital boundaries.
Setting those boundaries online
so that people don't have expectations of you
that you are not actually planning to fulfill.
I've told you many times I don't check email
until a certain time in the day
or if I am in my email before that
I'm looking for a specific thing that I am working on
and I need to find out information about.
Part of that is not just because I need to focus
during that period of time and work on the email
and nothing else at the same time so that the multitasking
doesn't effect how good of a job I'm doing.
It's also so I don't end up
in this quick back-and-forth email, email, email
with another person
so that they think I'm just sitting in my inbox all day
waiting for them to write me back.
That's not like a too cool for school thing,
that's like I respect your time
as much as I respect my time thing.
So when people start thinking
oh, they're gonna write me back right away
they're gonna start having false expectations of me
and vice versa.
I don't wanna have that expectation of other people.
I don't wanna start just subconsciously putting in my head
that whenever I send so-and-so an email
they usually kick me one right back.
If that's the case,
I probably need to send them a few videos to watch,
not gonna lie.
So yeah, spending specific hours of the day,
maybe they're not the same every day, I get it.
You can't be robotic all the time
but realizing that checking email
or checking text messages,
things that are giving you something to do
that someone else is asking of you
needs to have a dedicated timeframe
where you can focus on that.
So you're saying no to every other hour of the day
by not checking your email during that time.
And that's pretty self explanatory.
I've actually recently changed my strategy even more on this
to help people understand.
What I don't like is getting an automatic email
back from someone as soon as I email them that says,
"Hey, just wanted you to know
"I only check email during certain hours of the day."
Like, I literally don't care.
Just because I sent you an email doesn't mean I need to know
right now that I only, I'm gonna see emails from you
during certain hours of the day.
I'm just hoping you're gonna respond to it at some point.
So rather than doing an automatic response,
I am having something in my signature that says,
"Hey, just so you know I only check email
"once or twice a day."
If this is more urgent and you are expecting response sooner
you're not gonna get it from me
so you're gonna need to connect with my assistant.
That's something that I can do because I have an assistant.
Some of you don't so maybe it makes more sense
to just say in the signature,
"Hey, I'm only gonna check email a couple times a day
"so you may not hear back from me right away.
"If it's urgent text me."
Everyone's gonna have their different situations
but that's a really great way of being helpful,
setting expectations and saying no
to the times you're not planning on connecting with them
and then you can decide when they call you
or send you a text if you're gonna take it.
Me personally, again I don't respond to texts
until I am available.
If you call me and it's not on the calendar
I do not pick up, I just don't.
Like ask anyone in my life.
If you are not on my calendar and you're calling me
I am horrified.
I'm like, I'm a millennial, don't you know that?
I'm not answering the phone.
The next digital boundary is the thing
that's always trying to get our attention
and it is so good at it, social media.
I have nothing against social media,
I live for social media.
It's so fun.
It has enabled me to do something amazing with my life.
I love talking to people there but I do it on my time.
I decide when that's going to happen.
And so I will make, again certain times of the day
where it's time to go into my Instagram DMs
or it's time to look at my Twitter responses.
I've gotta get better
at checking my LinkedIn private messages
because for whatever reason people DM me
and they think it's urgent
and I never, ever, ever reply to them
and they don't think to go to my website
and look up my email address.
I still haven't figure that out yet but whatever.
It doesn't mean I'm going to change my habits.
If I have to miss an opportunity
it's because I was making time for one
that I intentionally chose and was focused on.
So to me it's not that big of a missed opportunity.
If you really wanted to talk to me
you woulda gone to my website.
You woulda found out that I have an assistant.
You would have looked at anything I do ever
and found out how I did things.
Woo, a little passionate on that one.
Now let's talk about some in real life no thank you moments.
Something I think a lot of people struggle with
is their kids asking for their attention
when they're trying to focus on something.
And that's not something
that I can speak from experience on.
However, I do have a dog and I know it is not the same.
I'm gonna start right now, do not send me the hate comments.
It is not the same thing.
I can put her in a kennel and leave the house.
I know that that's very different.
But sometimes my 14-year-old beagle,
which I actually like to say she's 101 years old
approximately in dog years,
she is a little bit high maintenance.
And there will be moments when I'm on a call
or there will be moments when I'm making a video
or there will be moments
when I am focused on getting something done
and she's like, you know that table flip thing
people always type on their keyboards?
That's what she does with her dog bowl
and that's meaning she wants food.
So there are certain things
where I have to tell her no
that remind me a little bit like I have a kid in the house
and I'm like, you're acting quite human and it's annoying.
During the times I know that if I lose focus
I am going to lose whatever I'm working on
whether it's writing a blog post, writing out a video,
doing some catch up on emails with people
that have really been wanting my attention
and Lucy's gonna take away from that,
I have to put her away.
I don't like to do that because I work from home
for the specific reason of spending time with her
and I think a lot of work-at-home parents
can probably identify with that.
But I need to put her away.
I think the comparable thing for that with a parent
would be naptime, right?
Like that's your focus time,
that's when hopefully the kid is reliably gonna go to sleep
which I get doesn't always happen
but there's those moments, right?
Or there's the playtime when they go to daycare
and it's like okay great this is the time
we need to get really focused.
When I say no to Lucy
it's me saying I need to focus on me right now
and I cannot focus on you.
So I'm gonna do everything I can before
in order to be able to make time for myself.
So for Lucy it means taking her on a walk.
If you're a parent
it means a whole lot of other things, right?
And I do that so that I can make time to say no.
I'm not trying to have this conversation
because I'm trying to compare the two,
I'm just saying this is the only experience I have
and she is to the point
where I feel like I have a little bit of experience
with high maintenance.
And it may seem hard to believe
but even a dog can pull your attention
away from what you're doing, distract you to no end,
and quite frankly keep you from being effective.
Another really difficult and touchy one
is your significant other or your family members
who you might live in the same house with.
Vincenzo and I have to have this talk all the time
where I have to tell him no
and he's not always expecting that no
because we operate very differently.
And this ends up being like analog, real life, digital,
it means like a whole lotta things all the time.
He'll ask me if I responded to an email and I didn't
and I don't intend to in the next few hours
and he just has to adjust to that in his head
because that's just how I'm doing things.
Now if it becomes a more urgent issue
and there's something that I need to work on very quickly,
that's a totally different situation.
Business together especially
means that things are not gonna be great all the time.
Things are not gonna work to my calendar blocking perfection
all the time and so I do have to be flexible
when things change.
But if it's genuinely like that's your preference
and it's not mine, well unfortunately I gotta go with mine
in that situation.
In a personal life side of things,
if it's like oh I have some work to get done
but this is probably supposed to be time for us
like it's after work and I'm working late
and that's not amazing or vice versa.
Same happens with him.
It's not like I'm the workaholic.
Vin is a hard worker as well so we'll find
that sometimes we're on a different wavelength.
I'll wanna watch a movie
and he's got a bunch of emails to return
or a proposal to create or something like that.
Business and life really, really come into contact a lot
in our world and that becomes a total respect issue
but it's also communication.
To me, I have to say, "I just wanna give you a heads up.
"I've looked at my day."
Because I have done a full dissection
of what I've gotta do and when it's gotta get done
and I have reverse engineered that,
I know for a fact
I will be working until nine o'clock tonight.
So I just wanna give you the heads up.
I'm gonna make time for dinner, we're gonna do that,
we're gonna have that time together,
and then I gotta check out and I'm really sorry about that
but I'm not that sorry about that
because I'm giving you the heads up
and I know that you respect
that I gotta gets something done.
The no, if it's communicated properly, is often welcome
you just have to say it.
It can't just sort of like be this,
uh, I'm gonna sneak away and do the thing that I need to do
but I'm not gonna tell you about it
because you'll probably interrupt me
'cause you don't know how important it is
and I didn't tell you that and I also didn't tell you
you need to leave me alone
because this is really difficult.
Also, can you throw your headphones on
because I'm editing a video and that whole sound thing
is an issue.
It's the communication of it.
You don't have to say no a lot of the time,
especially in these really touchy situations.
I'm saying it's really touchy
just because it sounds like it's simple
but when you're really talking to somebody
about the fact that you're choosing to do something else
during a time that they may have thought
that it was gonna go another way, you've just gotta be real
about the fact that somebody has feelings about it.
I think the biggest takeaway of all of this,
it doesn't matter if it's online or in real life
or whatever is going on in your world
where you feel like you need to say no,
it's often that we're just afraid to communicate it at all
that becomes the issue.
It's not even like you have to tell someone no.
Ya know, it's not even really that.
It's usually more along the lines of,
"I wish I could help, however this is what's going on,"
or, "This is how I do things."
I think you should be really open to standing your ground
on how you do something
because it shows someone you do have boundaries,
you do have processes,
and it doesn't mean you have to be rigid in them,
it just means that you're not just floatin' in the wind
like a leaf based on what somebody else wants you to do.
I hope that's really helpful information for you
as you think about how you can better say no
to the people in your life
who might want the attention
that you're not quite ready to give.
I'd love to hear how you have found
a great way to say no in those situations,
help us all out to perfect this.
Leave a comment below with how you say no
when it's not time to give your attention
to somebody who wants it.
And while we're talking about this
I wanna give a quick shoutout to today's sponsor
and that is Skillshare.
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as you think about saying no
to the attention you don't wanna give
and getting focused on the attention you do.
That class is called Productivity Today:
Managing Attention in the Digital Age.
This is a great class with Todist.
I highly recommend it.
It's one good thinker on managing your time better
and focusing on what you need.
The premium membership for Skillshare
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(chuckles)
the first 200 of you who click on the link
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So go check out that class I told you about
because it's free, hello.
I know you like free videos about productivity.
It's what our whole relationship is pretty much based on.
That and probably your affinity
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Links to everything for you to try
are in the description below.
Thanks to Skillshare again for sponsoring this episode
of Amy TV.
That's all for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in, I appreciate it as always.
Make sure you subscribe for good vibes and remember
to continue to go after the life that you want, cheers.
(mellow contemporary music)