This guest post is by Jenny Wood, a former Google executive who led one of the company’s biggest career programs, helping thousands take charge of their professional growth. Her new book, Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It, is a bold guide to standing out and getting ahead by embracing 9 unexpected traits.

Most professionals don’t struggle with time management. They struggle with people-pleasing.

From an early age, we’re conditioned to say “yes.” Yes to additional responsibilities. Yes to impromptu meetings. Yes to anything that signals we’re cooperative team players. But this automatic response creates a significant dilemma: every time we say yes to something inessential, we’re implicitly saying no to work that actually matters.

As Nir Eyal points out in Indistractable, if you don’t take control of your time, someone else will.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: https://www.nirandfar.com/protect-your-focus/

• Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

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