How I Killed My Inner People-Pleaser (and Got My Time Back)

Lion ignoring messages (created by ChatGPT)

Saying “Yes” feels amazing…until you hit the cliff.

Each yes stacks up until BOOM, you’re plunging over the edge. It started with good intent, but now you’re buried in so many projects and tasks that you can barely breathe.

I remember the excitement I felt as a new leader when a meeting invite popped into my inbox. Heck, I still get a small surge when I see an invite filled with the names of VIPs.

I love solving problems, so meetings gave me a chance to shine. As time progressed, this turned into a problem because each meeting grew my to-do list. My stress levels went through the roof and I found myself working long hours to keep up with projects.

Physical manifestations of overwhelm started popping up in my life. Insomnia struck. Brain fog rolled in most days. It was hard to be present with my family.

It took me nearly having a nervous breakdown to realize that this wasn’t normal.

The Illusion of a “Helpful Yes”

Things like this build up over time and you don’t realize the impact until you’re drowning. I thought I was just helping others out, but what I was really doing was making commitments that I had no realistic way of keeping.

Then I heard a statement that shifted my entire perspective:

Every “Yes” comes with a cost.

I went from chasing the dopamine hit of saying yes and started weighing the impact—what did this “yes” force me to give up?

Once you understand the hidden cost, there are several key strategies you can take to avoid making commitments that don’t align with your goals.

The Hidden Cost of Meetings

Companies hire people to solve problems.

Whether it’s building a piece of software, delivering a dish to a customer, caring for a patient, or managing a team, your purpose is to solve a problem that delivers value and provides revenue.

According to a 2016 article in the Harvard Business Review, many employees now spend 80% of their time in meetings or responding to emails. Executives spend an average of 23 hours a week in meetings.

I can attest to this.

It’s all too easy to let your entire day fill with meetings. Constantly switching contexts, scrambling to take notes, your to-do list filling up so fast that it makes you dizzy…madness! It’s a recipe for failure.

And emails? Coming back to 50-100 new emails after taking a day off reveals the insanity.

When your day is filled with constant noise, where is there time for deep work? How can you be indispensable in all that chaos?

You can’t.

You must take steps to reclaim your time.

You must calculate the true cost of each meeting you attend.

Escape the Meeting Trap (Tactical Shift)

How much more could you accomplish if you had 5 additional hours of uninterrupted focus time per week?

That’s the power of learning to reduce the number of unnecessary meetings by one hour a day. That power can be amplified if you can reduce the morning meetings, which is generally when we are at our peak mental performance levels.

Here’s how I’ve accomplished this.

First, I let my boss know that the number of meetings I was in is impacting my ability to focus and resulting in an inability to complete projects on time. We set guidelines on what meetings I had to attend and what ones I had the discretion of declining.

Then, I implemented my “Should I Join This Meeting” strategy:

• Is there a clear purpose listed on the invite?

• Does it align with our current strategic goals?

• Is it about an issue that is persistent or high-impact enough to justify meeting?

• Do I need time to prep for it? (If yes, block time before)

• Will I need post-processing time? (If yes, block time after)

The last bullet is key. Unless you have AI recording the meeting, you need time after the meeting to summarize, process, and file, otherwise you may have to meet again just to remember what was said.

Your brain also needs a break before diving into the next subject.

To be honest, this doesn’t work every day. There are still days where 6+ hours of my day is filled with back-to-back meetings.

But those days are fewer and farther between.

The hardest part was learning to let go of the need to be on every meeting. Fear of missing out is real.

The Power of Saying “No” (Mindset Shift)

At first, it feels like a punch in the gut to say “No.” Do I really not care about this person? What about the good that this will do?

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.

-Steve Jobs

Apple frequently gets criticized for not implementing the latest fad, but they are living out Jobs’ philosophy. As someone who started out PC and Android and is now fully converted into the Apple ecosystem, I get it.

You can’t unleash the creative beast within when you fill your life with distractions.

My best work occurs when I can block out everything and focus on a single goal. I enter a state of flow where I’m able to accomplish the impossible. But that requires a mindset shift.

Every distraction breaks your ability to focus. Some say it takes 23 minutes to reset.

When we take that to a macro level, Jobs’ words sing to us. Stop trying to boil the ocean and hyper-focus only on the select few projects that you can sustain at the moment.

Maximizing your potential means you’ll have to get comfortable with saying “No.”

Crushing The People-Pleaser

The lion does not concern himself with Microsoft Teams notifications.

Image credit (unknown - screen grab from social media)

I laughed when I first saw it, then headed for the comments section to commiserate with all the other poor souls enslaved by this “wonderful” all-in-one tool.

As I expected, the comments were filled with remarks about the inability to just ignore Teams or Slack notifications.

Something didn’t sit right with me.

It hit me. Quick responses to Teams messages are another form of saying “Yes” to someone. It’s a people-pleasing activity.

Allowing Teams notifications to disrupt your focus will lead to an inability to complete the things that are truly important.

What you tolerate today, what you are enslaved to tomorrow.

How can you break the slavery? Complete visual elimination.

If you can see that there’s an unread notification, your brain will nag at you until you open it. Go into settings. Turn off all notifications. All of them. No sounds. No pop-ups. Nothing.

You can’t produce your best work when you’re constantly wondering what that notification was.

I let my team and my boss know that during certain times, I will be unreachable (they can see it blocked on my calendar). During times I’m not focusing, I pull Teams up on a second screen to monitor for new notifications.

When I resurface from a focus session, I then triage any messages like emails and only respond immediately to any urgent messages.

Interestingly, I’ve found that by saying “No” to instant response, it reduces the desire for people-pleasing in my responses. Without the pressure to make a quick decision, I can process, remember that saying “Yes” to this request means saying “No” to other things, and then craft a response that lets the requestor know that I value our relationship, I just can’t say yes to the ask.

Sounds impossible, right?

Try This: Turn off all your notifications for 2 hours a day and see what happens. If the world doesn’t end, try extending it a bit longer each day.

Respect Earned Through Boundaries

Your job doesn’t have to feel like a plunge over a cliff’s edge any longer. I’ve gone from insane stress levels to a flowing stream level of calm by employing a few key changes.

Here are three things you can take away from this article:

1. Every task you accept, email you read, and message you respond to takes away from the time you could be spending on a meaningful project. Count the cost of every “Yes.”

2. Minimize distractions. Turn off pop-up notifications. Reject meeting invites without clear purpose. Focus on what matters.

3. Let go of your need to please everyone. When you try to make everyone happy, you end up miserable.

It sounds impossible, but you can do it. In my chaotic years, I remember a meeting where one person’s resolve stood out. We were in the middle of a fantastic discussion and ran out of time. My team normally just continued beyond the end of the meeting time.

This person refused.

She stated the meeting ended at 4pm. That was the agreement we had made and we would stick to it. We could request another meeting if we wanted to continue.

Were we mad? No!

Afterward, my coworkers and I discussed how inspiring it was that this person stood up for herself and set boundaries.

Hearing a “No” may sting at first, but if you are consistent and principled, your colleagues will respect you more every time they get refused.

Every “No” to chaos is a “Yes” to greatness.

What is one “No” you need to say this week?

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