My Harvard colleague Robin Bernstein has this great piece on artful ways of saying no, titled: “The Art of ‘No.’”

better at saying no to? In the past, if someone asked me for something, I may have given them a, “Sounds good, man. I’ll check my schedule and we’ll figure something out.” The hope was that it would just go away, but the result was me being pestered for a meeting I didn’t want to take. I’d have to come up with new excuses as to why I was too busy.