A change of pace for me with a non-fiction, self-help book. This is a new book from the author of “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k” and is aimed at helping people understand the value of saying “No” in both a personal and professional setting. I wanted to give this a read because weirdly I was just in the process of writing a LinkedIn article about the value of learning to say “No” to things at work so it was interesting to see a take on it from someone who had made this her career.
Generally speaking it’s a useful book that helps people understand that you don’t always have to say yes to people and things – sometimes saying no will actually do more to achieve an outcome you want. A really useful bit was a flowchart that helps you understand that saying yes is often out of a sense of obligation and there really won’t be negative consequences to saying no.
Where it falls down for me is that the author comes across a bit self-congratulatory – her anecdotes feel very much “Look at my perfect life in a tropical paradise where I get to travel all over the world”. I’m sure other people will be fine with that but to me it just tonally felt wrong in places. Also, I’d recommend the paper version of the book. I read on Kindle and the formatting of the content was terrible (random footnotes in the middle of the page, incorrect chapter settings) which may not have helped the flow of the book.
I really do recommend people learn why it’s important to be able to say “No” and if it’s something you struggle with (you’re always the volunteer to organise things, you’re staying late at work, you go to an event you didn’t really want to) then this book will probably be useful to you.