Easygoing Features

Are you a busy man? Are there a million things that you need to get done on a daily basis? When you come home from work do you just want to sit down and do nothing? Don’t we all…

In an ideal world, when you walk through your door in the evenings you’d have an hour or two to yourself to relax and calm down after a hectic day at work. Unfortunately this isn’t always the case. Thanks to colleagues, friends, family and other acquaintances evenings have become the time of day when you catch up with people, attend events and morph into a social butterfly.

Ever have one of those weeks where you’re just flat out busy? Work is hectic, you’re in early and leaving late, then when you get home you have to go to a retirement party/birthday party/dinner with friends/drinks with colleagues. Soon you’re coming home exhausted, to go out exhausted only to crawl back home to bed exhausted and get up at stupid o’clock the next morning (still exhausted).

Here’s a simple way to reclaim your evenings and ensure that you save yourself an hour that can be spent doing more important things, like catching up on work, playing sport or sitting in your boxers, drinking beer and watching football.

All you have to do is start saying no to lame social invites. That’s it. Just think of the time you could save!

Generally, we’re pretty good at judging when something is going to be fun and when something is going to be duller than Brendan O’Connor’s attempts at humour. Example: night out with your friends = guaranteed good times. Night out with your boring work mates = three hours you could have spent doing more important things.

Unfortunately, us Irish people are great at feeling guilty. Our sense of guilt is hereditary – passed on down through the generations. We feel guilty if we even THINK about reneging on a promise or turning down an invite. But it’s time to get over it and stop letting our consciences guilt trip us into agreeing to nights at the ballet (why?) a trip to an art gallery (snoozefest…) or having dinner with your inlaws (whyyyy?!)

If you want to reclaim a few hours of your day and start being more efficient when it comes to your work/life/me-time balance, all you have to do is start saying no.

You get invited to a retirement party of someone at your job who you’ve never spoken to/who doesn’t even work in your department. SAY NO.

Your sister wants you to visit but there’s football on, she lives an hour away and you’ll see her at Christmas (it’s only a few months away, right?). SAY NO.

Your girlfriend wants you to double-date with one of her BFFs who has the most boring boyfriend in the history of all time. If you can get away with it: SAY NO.

Once you start saying no to stuff, it’ll get easier. Trust us. You’ll find you’ll save loads of time not wasting your life going to dull social gatherings.

You are welcome.