Most of us in the museum field feel we have too much work and too little time. No matter how much we get done, our to-do lists never seem to get any shorter—only longer by leaps and bounds. Despite our heavy workloads, it’s hard to say no to a new project, especially when we can see that it would have a positive impact. But throughout my experiences working in and with museums, I’ve seen how often these attempts to do everything can end with doing nothing. It’s better to focus our efforts on doing an outstanding job of a few projects rather than a mediocre job of a hundred. But, as you might be thinking, this is easier said than done. As you face requests and opportunities, how do you decide what to say no to, and how do you actually say no? Here’s a practical guide to both questions based on what I’ve learned from working with all types of museum teams.

1. Analyze the Workload.

When I begin work with a team that’s underwater and struggling, I like to do a simple exercise to understand the relationship between the volume of their work and the impact of their work. This approach works for individuals, teams, and even entire divisions.

First, list all of the tasks on the team’s plate. Be sure to include both routine, daily tasks and those related to special projects. Next, assign each task a level of difficulty. I like to keep it simple: is this task low-effort or high-effort? Don’t overthink it; just put it in one of those two categories. If something takes a long time to complete or has a lot of manual steps, that’s a high-effort task. If something takes very little time or is automated, that’s a low-effort task.

Next, assign each task a level of impact: does this task have a high level of impact on the museum, its constituents, and its mission? Or does it have a low impact? Again, don’t spend too much time talking this through: go with your gut instinct.

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Once you’ve done that for each task, group the tasks into four categories:

When we view our workloads in this light, some immediate questions should present themselves. Why are we doing these high-effort tasks that have a low impact? What happens if we do them less often? Can we automate them, even if it diminishes the quality of the outcome? Or…what if we just say no and stop doing them?

You might also choose to say no to some low-impact and low-effort tasks. Sure, they aren’t much work—but they aren’t doing much, so why waste your time? Any opportunity to say no will let you commit more time and effort to tasks that have a greater impact.

Organizing tasks like this can point to a lot of opportunities for improvement, so make sure you interrogate those question mark categories (low effort tasks that are low impact and high effort tasks that are high impact) closely to see if you can move some of those tasks to the low effort, high impact quadrant.

This exercise is a great one for both managing down and managing up. This kind of support for a struggling team not only has a real impact on their workload, but also helps create a positive culture of rational decision making. And if you’re trying to convince your manager to let you say no to some projects or tasks, this framework can be a great way to demonstrate that you aren’t trying to shirk responsibilities, you’re trying to make your department—and your organization—more effective and efficient.

2. Refer to the Strategic Plan.

Another great way to prune projects is to ask: is this project aligned with our strategic plan? In theory, this is exactly what a strategic plan is for: helping teams choose from among many good ideas. When well-written, your organization’s plan should help you decide which projects get greenlit and which don’t make the cut.

For example, if your museum has decided to prioritize local visitation over tourist visitation, tourist-centric projects—no matter how brilliant or innovative they are—should be scaled down or eliminated entirely. This is an approach that works equally well whether you’re managing down or managing up. Leaders should be keeping the team focused on the strategy to ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction, and teams can use this approach to contextualize their work in the big picture for their manager.

Unfortunately, a common pitfall in this approach is a poorly written strategic plan. If a plan is too broad and generic, it’s easy for an enterprising staff member to find rationale for any and all projects, and harder for their colleagues to find rationale for saying no. This is why it’s all-important to develop a specific, well-tailored plan to at the outset.

3. Offer Limited Choice.

If these two approaches have not yet winnowed your project list down to a reasonable length, it’s time to fall back on your own constraints. After all, there are only so many hours in a workday and overtime should be a rarity. Look at the projects on your plate and consider a few versions of what you can realistically accomplish in the work time available to achieve them. For instance, you may have time to do Small Projects A, B, C, and D, but that means you won’t be able to start on Big Project E. Or you could take on Big Project E, but only one of the small projects.

Bring these trade-offs to your manager to reach a mutual decision. Be sure to stay focused on the concrete choice you’ve outlined: doing all of it is not possible—the decision is between scenario one and scenario two. If you haven’t asserted a workload boundary before, this can be an uncomfortable conversation at first, but it’s a necessary one. If your manager expects the team to say yes to everything, workload expectations will quickly become unrealistic. The more you calmly and consistently you state what you can and cannot accomplish with the time and resources available to you, the easier the conversation will be, and the more successful you will be in your work. Additionally, it will give your manager an idea of where the team might need more resources.

If you are a manager, you can also use this approach in the other direction, helping your team proactively balance their workloads. As you consider new projects, bring a range of possibilities to the team and let them talk through what they can reasonably accomplish; it will result in a stronger team and better-quality work.

In order to be successful, we need to do less. And that means saying no—thoughtfully, with the best interests of both the individuals and the organization in mind.