There are some great suggestions in here -- and a great plea, Sulph (can I call you Sulph? after all, I inflicted Turq on Turquoise, and it seems only fair).
I have real problems with this, because I tend to endow the asker (my chair, whatever) with parent-like qualities, and forget that I'm a colleague, in essence an equal.
This is really important -- refusing to do take on additional tasks. I guess it's important to decide whether something has a tangible benefit for you, and only in that instance say yes.
I like Fraud's suggestion to use something you did agree to as a way to refuse something else (I tend not to do that because I think "well, I wanted X, so how can I justify refusing to do somehting else because I _chose_ to do X." Stupid.
And I think I'm going to adopt Twilight's suggestion of keeping a list of things that have been refused without causing the world to end -- and adding a list of what I _have_ agreed to, so that I stop imagining that I'm not pulling my weight somehow.
Whew. Hot button issue for me, obviously.
--
Posted by Chartreuse Circe to academicsecret at 8/23/2006 12:24:45 PM
