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I’ve been speaking at a few events recently, many connected with the Ingenious Women programme which we’ve got Scottish Government Can Do funding to run for Scottish STEM researchers. This means I’m talking  a fair bit about how to make the most of your network and use it for help and opportunities. In a talk last week for the BCS Women and BCS Edinburgh branch about how to distill luck, I put up the following slide to guide attendees before asking busy people to help them.

As I talked through the ideas on the slide it struck me that the guidelines were very similar to the questions my boss asks me when I go to him with a cool idea that will take up even more of my time. If I can convince him of the value of the activity, he’s usually happy for me to go ahead and if not, he usually does me the huge favour of saying no. Quickly I realised that this was a set of guidelines I should apply to myself more often as a technique for working out what to say yes to…and what to politely decline.For those who are keen to say no more often, here are some tricky questions to help you.

• Can you sum up the demands of this task/opportunity in a few words and what value it adds?

Is this as appealing when I have to dig into the pros and cons?

• What evidence do you have that your answer to the question above is reliable?

Are tasks usually more straightforward than they appear at first? Do they usually deliver more than at first glance? Will the benefits just happen or do I need to ask for them?

• Will this help you in the future? Or is it more of the same in terms of your development?

Is this a development opportunity for someone else? Hmm…who can I pass this to?

• Can you accurately work out what time you will need to commit to this?

Do I have this time to spare? What will I have to stop doing in order to do this?

• Is this opportunity a solution to a problem you’re facing?

Does this put you into a new network? Does it give you chance to develop a skill you need? Does it add a line – the right line – to your CV?

I’ll return to my original theme of asking busy people for help in the next blog, but for now take a moment to work out which questions you need to ask yourself to make better decisions about the very precious resource which is your time.

Do I really want to do this? / IAD4RESEARCHERS by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0