Durham

The other night, I got a call from one of the matriarchs of my neighborhood. She’s one of those people whom everyone knows and respects, even when she’s got a bee in her bonnet about something and they disagree with her. She’s like the elementary school teacher you adored. Except that she uses the F word occasionally.

Anyway, she called to ask me to co-chair the annual home tour. We live in a historic neighborhood, so when we do home tours, hundreds of people come and the neighborhood fills its coffers. Which allows it to do good deeds like donate to local schools and make park improvements.

But it’s a lot of work to organize this thing — creating a guide book, selling ads, recruiting dozens of volunteers, doing PR, planning an after-party, and on and on.

On the plus side, it’s a good way to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet, which I’m a fan of. And it’s a leadership opportunity. Ever since I quit my job as an editorial manager to have kids, that opportunity doesn’t present itself so often. And, as I said, it does allow the neighborhood to do more good deeds.

So I said yes. But then I thought about it some more. I realized that I’ve fallen victim to saying yes a lot in the past few years. Sometimes my volunteering keeps me so busy, my paying work gets pushed to the evenings and weekends, which is nuts, given how stressed-out I am about being a freelancer in this economy. Or I’ll volunteer to do something at my daughter’s school, and while the other parents are actually enjoying the event with their children, I’m walking around with a clipboard organizing things.

And I started wondering, “Why do I keep doing this? Why is it so hard for me to say no?”

My gut told me that I have zero time to co-chair a home tour right now, so I quickly emailed my neighborhood friend and said “thank you very much, incredibly honored to have been asked, but no.” It felt surprisingly good. Then I thought about how I could say no more often.

Forget about “worthy.” I’ve often volunteered because something seemed worthy and I thought no one else would step up to do it. Like co-chairing the home tour or leading fundraisers for my daughter’s school. But the list of worthy things is long. Not even Gandhi could tackle them all. “Worthy” can’t be reason enough to say yes.

Focus on what matters now. For every volunteer stint, I have to think, “Does this align with my other interests?” For example, I write about parenting, my children are currently in school, and I’d love to find more work opportunities around education. So the volunteer work I do as a precinct captain for Kids Voting makes sense. I’m also excited about the Slow Food movement, so the Edible Schoolyard project I’m working on for my daughter’s school? It stays on my to-do list.

You’ve heard the saying, “You can do it all, you just can’t do it all at the same time.” It’s like that. Pick and choose volunteer work that integrates well with your life the way it is now. Say no to the rest.

Say “yes, but.” At work, if someone asked you to do something you knew you couldn’t accomplish within the time frame, you’d speak up. You’d ask your boss to reprioritize the tasks or you’d propose an alternate timeline (unless you’re addicted to being busy). So when a volunteer job is going to interfere with doing other things that need to take priority — like spending time with my kids or hitting my work deadlines — I need to set limits. Otherwise, it’s self-sabotage.

When I called back my home-tour friend, for example, I offered to come to the first two meetings to “download” my institutional knowledge and help sketch out the big picture.

I’ve started thinking about my volunteer work the same way I think about my freelance work. That is, I need to manage it, rather than react to it. So that next time a worthy cause comes knocking — staring up at me like a wet, straggly dog on my doorstep — I won’t instinctively say yes.