The most valuable word in business is…

2025 is a year of anniversaries, 11 years of Selling Service, 25 years of music writing and 30 years with M.E.

On my list of blogs to write for a while has been “business lessons from having M.E.” The last couple of months have pushed that up the list of topics as I’ve managed to completely forget the lessons of 3 decades.

The most important of those being “pacing.”  According to the M.E.pedia, “pacing involves breaking down activities into smaller steps, resting between steps and doing small amounts regularly rather than a large amount of activity in one go.” If you think about waves. Big ones have large peaks and troughs, where small ones have a much smaller gap between the highs and lows. Pacing is about limiting the gaps between the peaks of activity and troughs of being able to do nothing at all. I’ve become pretty good at keeping the waves small. But with a couple of business shows and some late nights I had totally lost the plot by mid-May, and it’s taken weeks to get back to some sort of even keel.

Which brings me to that valuable word. You may have guessed that it is “NO.” Well maybe a slightly less emphatic version when dealing with valued clients, partners and friends but the principle holds good. We’ve all taken on clients and agreed to things that we know are not suitable for us personally or our businesses. If you’re the Duracell bunny with infinite get up and go, then great take it all on. But if you are more like a cheap pound shop battery with only enough energy for a dimly lit bulb then rationing your reserves is a good plan.

And you don’t need to have a chronic fatigue condition to benefit from pacing and saying “no” a bit more often. If you are leading a team or on your own in the business, then the mental and emotional toll that spinning all the plates takes is enough to sap your energy, physical or spiritual.

There are around quarter of a million people believed to have M.E. and maybe up to 400,000 with Long Covid, plus other chronic fatigue conditions. That suggests that you are likely to know someone who is living with brain fog, tiredness, a rubbish immune system, general lethargy, and other various aspects of either a physical condition, or just general overwhelm from not pacing themselves. If you recognise yourself in those symptoms, then you may just need to learn to say no a bit more often. Let’s practice some ways of saying it together…

• “I can’t take on more work just now.”
• “I’d be happy to introduce you to someone else who can help.”
• “I haven’t the capacity just now”
• “I’m honestly struggling just now, but I’d be happy to help another time.”

Another important point is knowing when to say no because the work is outside your core services. Saying yes because you don’t want to turn someone away risks impacting your existing work because you are struggling with something you really aren’t confident with. A networking colleague posted about exactly this dilemma earlier in the week, and took the right course by saying “thanks, but no thanks.” So, another phrase to practice…

• “That’s not where my skill set lies, but I can suggest someone who can help.”

It's important to know your limits personally, and also where the edges are in what services you can, or a willing to offer. Once you have established those, saying no without jeopardising relationships will become easier as you can explain the “why” behind the no, which most reasonable people will understand and accept.

Action for M.E. have lots of useful resources about pacing. Start here.
https://www.actionforme.org.uk/supporting-you/pacing-and-energy-management/