Last month, Kevin Ashton published the blog post “Creative People Say No,” a post with which I agree wholeheartedly. If you haven’t already read it—or even if you have—I recommend that you read it now. Click on the link, leave my page, and read it. Then come back here. I’ll wait.
As Ashton writes in his post, creating is work, and it requires time, and in order to have enough time in which to do their work, creative people say no: no to dinner invitations, no to coffee dates, no to meeting friends here or there. No, no, no.
I’m a huge proponent of no. I don’t like hearing it so much, but I love saying it.
Once when I was on a deadline, a friend dropped by unannounced and uninvited with lunch. A few days earlier, I’d declined this friend’s offer to bring me lunch, explaining that I was on a deadline. Her response was, “You have to eat.” Of course I had to eat, but eating on my own and at my desk requires very little time and barely diverts my attention from the work. Eating with another person takes more time and attention—which I didn’t care to spare.
Nevertheless, when she showed up with lunch, I slapped a smile on my face and spent ninety grudging minutes in her company. Even though she’d created a social obligation for me that I didn’t want, I felt I couldn’t wolf down the food and send her on her way. When you’re an introvert, interacting with other people often feels like acting to begin with; when you’re an introvert who’s been intruded upon, interacting with the intruder feels like nothing less than coercion.
I had quite an argument with myself during that lunch. Silently, I enumerated all the reasons I should be grateful that someone cared enough about me to go out of her way to feed me. I also enumerated all the reasons I was a selfish, unappreciative jerk. Miss Chi-Chi Rodriguez’s line from To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar kept going through my mind: “No one is so rich as to throw away a friend.”I didn’t want to discard my friend permanently; I just wanted to ditch her for a few days until I met my deadline. She wasn’t a close friend (you may be surprised by this, because sometimes I am, but I do have close friends), but even though we weren’t close, wasn’t occasional inconvenience part and parcel of friendship?
Without success, I tried to convince myself that she’d made a generous gesture. In reality, her gesture struck me then, and it strikes me now, as thoughtless. What kind of friend doesn’t listen to you when you tell her specifically what you actively do not want?
I was selfish, but I wasn’t the only one. My friend insisted on doing this despite my decline of the offer. From my perspective, that was selfish of her. I didn’t appreciate her gesture, but she didn’t appreciate the urgency of my deadline and the pressure I was under to meet it.
Of course friendship isn’t all about one person’s wants or needs. Maybe that was the lesson she was trying to teach me. If so, it wasn’t the only lesson I learned. I didn’t equivocate before, but now when I say no, I make sure the person I’m saying it to knows I mean it. It must be working, because no one else has shown up uninvited at my door with a chicken caesar salad.
No is just one side of the creativity coin. If saying no to your friends means you’re saying yes to your work, then do it. You may feel selfish—and, like me, you may in fact be selfish—but you’re the only one who can make your work a priority. No one else is going to protect your time for you.
Creative people say yes, too. We say yes to ourselves.
