In this post: learn how to say no and reject people in 3 easy and effective ways. This is useful to get out of social “obligations”, or unnecessary work “obligations” (i.e. a different team asking you to do some stuff for them but it’s not part of your job to do so).

Why You Have To Say No. A Lot.

You’ll die someday.

And you only have limited seconds from the moment you’re reading this to the time you lose your consciousness, forever.

With finite time, you cannot commit to infinite ‘opportunities’.

Thus, you need to say ‘no’ to a lot of things. Because things can take a long time. Even years and years – this is why things like business opportunities are so hard.

If you say yes to everything: you’ll die before you know it and you’ll regret your entire life because you’ll be a ‘yes-man/woman’ agreeing to everyone’s wishes, but your own.

You should only say yes to people very rarely. And you should only say yes to things that really, really matter to you and will be inherently rewarding to you, deep down to your bones.

3 Easy Ways To Say No

I hate lying. Even white lies where ‘I wish there were 2 of me!’ or ‘I’m honored but I totally can’t!’

I’m not honored someone is asking to waste my time. And I don’t wish there were 2 of me. I just don’t like it. Below are honest ways for you to express rejection without having to lie and compromise integrity.

No Bandwidth

This is true because everyone’s busy. Just say you don’t have bandwidth for it and you won’t be lying. We all have enough to do.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough bandwidth for this.

You’re not saying you even like this opportunity. So you don’t have to feel guilty about lying.

You also definitely don’t even have bandwidth for the opportunity. Because you’ll never have bandwidth for something you don’t want to do. Also not lying.

Everyone’s busy and everyone understands that other people are busy. Hence, anyone even with a remote amount of empathy would understand this. And if they keep pushing for some reason, try out the other 2 methods.

I Prefer Not To

This is harder to do. Because it invites questions. Especially for people who wants to convince you of stuff. But you can just pull a Bartleby (minus the part where you starve yourself to death). And say you would prefer not to.

Your response is always going to be:

I’d prefer not to.

It doesn’t matter if they follow up or ask why. Your responses to the follow up is just an inherent: “I’d prefer not to.”

If you gave the context of ‘no bandwidth’ first and then move onto this persistent strategy, you should be able to reject any requests without remorse.

After all: if you said you’ve no bandwidth and someone is pushing you to do something for them still, they’re asking for you to be more aggressive.

An alternate to this ‘I Prefer Not To’ method is the ‘No’ method below. It’s even simpler, and easier.

How To Say No…By Just Saying “No.”

“No.” is a complete sentence. To make it explicit–it’s OK to reject people in the following way:

No.

No excuses are needed. You can even skip the ‘I don’t have enough bandwidth’ to set context if you’d like.

This is a more aggressive approach if you don’t preface it with ‘I don’t have enough bandwidth’. However, it’s much more expedient and I’ve found that it works for me.

This is very hard to do the first time because it feels so aggressive. But remarkably addictive once you see how easy it is and how effective it is.

Consider this: You don’t owe anyone anything. Moreover, you don’t even owe anyone any excuse to do anything you don’t want to. So why prolong a conversation?

By giving an excuse or an out, or saying “man I’d love to but my kid’s have got XYZ” – stop. Stop trying to gain social favor with a ‘polite’ reject. Rip that band-aid clear off. And don’t invite any more conversation.

When someone asks you to do something for them: it’s a “yes” or “no” question. There’s no social obligation to do it for them.

Say “no” and they are obligated to expect your wishes.

If they don’t. Fuck ‘em. Cut them off.

An Example Conversation

The following is an extended conversation of how you might combine all 3 of these together.

Asshole: “Hey you, can you do this stupid task for me?”

You: “No.” (Greedy rejection, in hopes they just say “OK” and go away)

Asshole: “But whyyy notttt?” (Asshole being pushy)

You: “I don’t have the bandwidth, unfortunately.”

Asshole: “Can you do it once your bandwidth frees up for me?” (This asshole is acting like a salesperson. And has no social awareness)

You: “I’d prefer not to. Thanks.”

Asshole: “Why do you prefer not to?” (It’ll never come to this if you’ve rejected them 3 times already. But in the case of an asshole, they might just endlessly keep asking.)

You: “Because I’d inherently prefer not to. Goodbye.” (Save yourself 3 hours of time by cutting them off instead of having an endless conversation and leave the scene)

If they follow you, call the cops obviously.

Keep in mind this important note: this post is about rejecting social obligations and things you don’t have to do. If the asshole above is your boss pushing you to do a task, you might have to consider things like loss of income before rejecting them.

Also keep in mind, if your boss is the asshole, please start looking for another job. Now. Don’t even finish this post.

What If I Don’t Want To Say No And Need To Think About It?

Maybe you’re on the fence about something. Like choosing between job offers.

And maybe the counterparty is pushing a deadline for a yes/no rejection – the deadline being something much more urgent than you can possibly consider (i.e. “tell me yes or no right now”). Reject it. It’s a trap.

Urgency is a sales tactic only. And it’s disrespectful when you say you need sometime to think about it and they push for a decision.

Consider the following: If the opportunity they’re giving you is actually good – they don’t need you to make a decision right now. They’ll give you ample time to think. Because they’ll have many other people willing to do the same thing. And they can just reject you later and say “aw too bad someone else beat you to the punch – better luck next time.”

When you run into an ‘urgent scenario’: realize the power is in your hands, not theirs. They need you more than you need them. No matter what optics / political excuse they try to give you.

In Summary

Life is short. You should learn to say ‘no’ effectively and swiftly so you get massive amounts of time back to live your life in your terms–what a concept, I know!

Save time in 2 ways:

1. Not doing anything you don’t want to do.
2. Not have long, drawn-out, useless conversations about why you can’t do something.

The more you get up in life, the more you are going to get requests. And the more you’ll need to reject people. Get as good as rejecting people for social obligations as the hot chick in the club rejects guys. That’s the efficiency you’re looking for. And that efficiency can be accomplished with the 3 methods above.

PS: All human comments will be approved basically. But there is a comment approval procedure because there’s tons of bots that try and spam the comment section. Approvals are done within 24 hours generally.

PPS: Any questions/concerns/thoughts you don’t want to share in comments below? Shoot me a message hello@goodmoneygoodlife.com.