There's a version of this story where I say yes, join the committee, and spend the next two years quietly exhausted. I almost lived that version.
The ask came in a Friday afternoon email. A department-wide curriculum committee — volunteer, of course, but the kind of volunteer that's really not optional. I had three active grants, a manuscript under review, and two kids in elementary school. I said no.
I expected friction. I got a two-word reply: "No worries."
The boundary I thought would cost me something turned out to cost me nothing — except the anxiety I'd been carrying about setting it.
What we get wrong about boundaries
Most of us treat boundaries like landmines. We step around them carefully, afraid that triggering one will blow up a relationship, a reputation, or a career trajectory. So we say yes to the committee. We take the extra shift. We answer the 10pm email.
But here's what I've come to believe after years of watching people — and after writing a whole book about this: the people worth impressing aren't keeping score of your yeses. They're watching how you handle your work. They're watching whether you deliver. They're watching whether you protect your time well enough to actually perform.
A no, delivered cleanly and without apology, signals something useful: that you know what your time is worth.
The mechanics of a clean no
I've given a lot of messy nos in my career. The ones that over-explain. The ones that hedge with maybe-next-year. The ones that apologize so many times the other person ends up comforting me.
A clean no looks different. It's short. It doesn't invite renegotiation. It doesn't require you to justify your entire calendar. Here's the rough template I use:
- Acknowledge the ask briefly ("Thank you for thinking of me")
- Decline without elaboration ("I'm not able to take this on right now")
- Optionally offer something small if you genuinely want to ("Happy to share thoughts over email if that helps")
That's it. No paragraph of reasons. No three-week follow-up guilt spiral.
What happened after
My department chair and I have worked together for six years since that email. The committee was never mentioned again. What I remember instead: the grant I finished, the paper that came out of that quiet Friday afternoon, the weekend I didn't spend at a meeting.
The boundary that saved my career wasn't dramatic. It was a two-sentence email on a Friday. The saving happened quietly, in all the time and energy I didn't spend on something that wasn't mine to carry.
That's usually how it goes.