You are smart, talented and produce amazing work. Your colleagues rave about you and everything you do for them. You might even receive awards and accolades for what you do. But you are unhappy, stressed out and might even hate your job. How can all of this be true at the same time?

I have found this to often be the curse of some of the most talented people around. Because of the fantastic results you provide, you become the go-to person. For everyone! The work you’ve done for your team is praised, and before you know it some other team just wants a little help with their problem. Then the global team has a new project, and can you just be an advisor for that? And before you know it, it’s Friday night at 7pm and you have no end in sight for everything you have agreed to do.

There are many reasons people find themselves in this position. They may simply want to help, may not want to let their colleagues down, maybe have a sense of obligation or even a small minority might actually enjoy working 100 hours per week. But for most people these kinds of workloads are simply unsustainable and in the end lead to less quality work on a slew of things you simply can’t devote time to. And more importantly it leads to stress and unhappiness at work and almost certainly the same at home.

I have seen this often when managing projects for clients, when some individuals on my teams will simply accept every task assigned to them. This is great, until it isn’t. Very few people are dedicated solely to project work, and the demands of their ‘real job’ can quickly overtake what they have promised to deliver. And thus their positive team player attitude often ends up putting the project at risk.

The personal side of this can be even worse however, this is your life after all. My wife is one of the most talented people I know, always doing work above and beyond in whatever role she has been in. And she fits these descriptions perfectly, feeling a sense of obligation to her colleagues that overwhelms any obligation to her own happiness. In the past, I watched her work 80-90 hour weeks while people continue to ask for more (to which she almost always answers ‘sure!’). She would become tired, stressed and lose count of the number of times she couldn’t spend time with her children.

When managing people I count it important to watch out for the members of my team who might find themselves in this position. But if this description fits you, ultimately you are responsible for learning to say No to new requests. Especially when managing project teams, I appreciate when team members say they cannot deliver (to a certain extent of course), so I encourage people not to think that providing a realistic appraisal of the time they have to give means they are not a team player. It is a rare colleague who is going to encourage you to drive yourself into the ground and get 4 hours of sleep to help them with their work.

So next time you are being asked for ‘a little favor’, really ask yourself if you have time for that, and if you don’t then give a try at just saying No.