Had a great time giving a couple of talks at Harvard recently, on “Flow States and Human Flourishing” and “Prioritization, Saying No, and Managing Overwhelm”. 

One takeaway I’ve been thinking about: our ability to say “no” becomes increasingly important as we progress through our working lives. As our responsibilities grow, so do the worthwhile demands on our time.

Yet, it’s relatively underexplored as a character strength or virtue in its own right. I’ve started to think of it as a “performance virtue” - like other performance virtues such as resilience and determination - which plays a more significant role in our lives than just supporting other virtues.

For example, it helps us flourish and reach flow. Without it, we’re more likely to burn out, and we become too stretched to reach the depth of focus that flow requires. As we build it, we become better equipped to spend more time doing what’s most meaningful to us.

I’ll write more on this soon! For now, here’s a couple of pieces I’ve written on these topics:

📰 On saying no: howtoflourish.substack.…

📰 On flow & flourishing: howtoflourish.substack.…

💭 What would you spend more time doing if you got better at saying no?