A Story About Setting Boundaries and Saying No

“Could you take this on?” Five mornings in a row the first question put to me is the same, and five times I have said yes, although my calendar has long been overflowing.

It is Thursday, just after eight, and I am standing in the third-floor corridor with a coffee that is already going cold while I am still carrying it. As head of department in the building authority I know everyone here, and everyone here knows they can land it with me. The special analysis for the council, which really belongs with the finance department. The mediation between two units, which the unit heads really ought to handle themselves. The presentation to the committee that my colleague had actually agreed to give. All of it sits with me, because I nodded five times.

Nicole, who has kept my back clear for years, puts another note in front of me. “Herr Vogt is asking whether you’ll take the lead on the neighbourhood project. He says it won’t work without you.” She says it kindly, but I hear the warning underneath. “Herr Reineke, where is this all supposed to go?”

Good question. I know where it goes. It goes to my being the last to turn off the light in the evening and the first to open the emails that came in overnight. It goes to my taking home the feeling of having done a great deal and decided very little. My wife has started calling it by its name. “You’re the bad guy if you say no,” she said recently, “and the mug if you say yes. But only one of them is destroying you.”

I know why I nod. I nod because a no makes you unpopular for a moment, and being unpopular feels like failure to me. So I swallow the no and carry the load, so that everyone stays happy. Everyone except me.

In the afternoon I sit in front of the neighbourhood project. A good undertaking, no question. And I notice my hand already reaching for the acceptance, as always. This time I stop. I take a sheet of paper and write two columns. Left: what necessarily belongs on my desk, because only I can decide it? Right: what have I taken on because I could not say no? The right column fills up faster. It is twice as long.

The sight hurts and at the same time makes something clear. Every unconsidered yes to a thing somebody else could do better or just as well is a no to the things that need me. I sold my boundary in order to be liked, and in doing so lost precisely what I was brought in for.

On Friday I go to see Herr Vogt. My heart is pounding as if I had been summoned to account, when in fact I am the head of department. “About the neighbourhood project,” I say. “I have looked at it. It is important, and that is why it deserves someone who genuinely has time for it. Right now that is not me. I propose that Frau Aydin leads it — she is passionate about the subject — and I will be available for the two or three critical decisions.”

He looks at me, a moment too long. I hold his gaze. I feel the old urge to add something straight away, to soften the no, to somehow say yes after all. I say nothing more. I let the sentence stand.

“Hm,” he says finally. “Shame. But honest. And Aydin isn’t a bad idea.” That was all. No thunder, no withdrawal of affection. Just a person who has been given a clear answer and can carry on working with it.

On the way back my chest feels lighter and my step firmer. Nothing dramatic has changed, and yet everything has. I kept a boundary without starting an argument. I was clear without turning cold.

In the afternoon somebody comes again with a “could you take this on?”. I listen, I briefly check my two columns in my head. Then I say: “No, I can’t do that properly this week. Talk to the finance department, that’s where it belongs. If it gets stuck, come back to me.” It still feels unfamiliar. For the first time in a long while, it also feels right.

Setting boundaries does not mean becoming hard. It means being honest about what I can deliver, so that the important things get the energy they need. Every clear no to the wrong thing is a yes to the right one.