For many of us, the only time we use our out of office assistant or automatic responses on our email is when we are out of the office on vacation or medical leave and don’t have access to our computers.  But these are not the only circumstances when automatic responses are useful. 

A friend of mine has a rule for herself.  If anyone makes a request of her time, her response is, “Let me look at my calendar and get back to you.” 

As a profession, I teach systems of time management.  I’ve trained thousands of people at this point, and one of the most consistent friction points in my training sessions occurs when the concept of saying no comes up.

Say "no" more. What an easy thing to say. But what a difficult thing to do in our minute by minute experience of a day.

Here at Focus to Evolve, we consider the act of saying no as one of the four primary meta-skills that are required for that doubling-of-meaningful-output-in-the-same-number-of-hours-worked benefit. We call it a meta-skill, because there is no area of your life that won't improve (dramatically) when you begin to get good at saying no to the things that simply should not be on your plate.