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NFJS2025

Learn to Say “No” and End Your Multitasking!

You have too much work to do, and it’s all must-do, top priority. You know your multitasking is slowing down your work, making you crazy, and making it difficult to deliver your best work. You feel pulled in so many directions it’s difficult to make progress. You can show your work and learn how to say no in a way your managers can understand. You can create your personal project portfolio.

Learn to visualize your work and ask your manager for help in understanding what you should do first, second, and third. Maybe, even never. Learn how to create a parking lot so people know you’re not ignoring them; you’re not working on their desires now. Learn to have that conversation with your manager so you can say no and stop the multitasking.

  1. Why your managers ask you to multitask, aka, the problems of large batch size, silos, and not understanding capacity at any level.
  2. How you can visualize your work.
  3. Why paper is more effective than an electronic tool for the discussion. Create your personal board.
  4. Having the conversation with your manager.
  5. How to use a parking lot. Carve out your parking lot.
  6. Try having the “no” conversation. (Interactive with feedback.)

Johanna Rothman

About Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams learn to see simple and reasonable things that might work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can decide how to adapt their product development.

With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books about many aspects of product development. She’s written these books:

  • Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility
  • Become a Successful Independent Consultant
  • Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer
  • Modern Management Made Easy series: Practical Ways to Manage Yourself; Practical Ways to Lead and Serve (Manage) Others; Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization
  • Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts
  • From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams (with Mark Kilby)
  • Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver
  • Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
  • Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, 2nd edition
  • Project Portfolio Tips: Twelve Ideas for Focusing on the Work You Need to Start & Finish
  • Diving for Hidden Treasures: Finding the Value in Your Project Portfolio (with Jutta Eckstein)
  • Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost
  • Manage Your Job Search
  • Hiring Geeks That Fit
  • The 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
  • Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby)

In addition to articles and columns on various sites, Johanna writes the Managing Product Development blog on her website, jrothman.com, as well as a personal blog on createadaptablelife.com.

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