Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit. Someone asks you to do something. You don't want to do it, and you know that as they're asking. You say yes anyway, because saying no to their face feels impossible for the few seconds it would take. Later you pay for those few seconds with an evening, a weekend or a month of Tuesdays.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that the pull towards yes is strong and you're not feeble for feeling it. Researchers have measured it, and it's much stronger than people expect, including the people doing the asking. The second is that the yes buys very little. It buys relief from a discomfort that started when the person opened their mouth, and it's priced in hours. You make the trade because of a forecast about what a no would do to the other person and to their view of you, and that forecast is mostly wrong. The third is practical. Nearly all of the pull lives in the moment of being asked, face to face. You can move your answer out of that moment with one sentence. Chapters 12 to 14 cover how.

A few things this book isn't. It isn't a case for helping less, looking after yourself first or dropping people who need you. Chapter 10 is about the things you don't feel like doing and ought to do anyway. It also isn't a book of clever scripts for winning arguments. The words in chapter 13 are short and dull on purpose.

Four cautions.

The title is about tombolas, spare rooms and committee jobs. It is not about situations where somebody frightened, threatened or forced you. If you went along with something because refusing didn't feel safe, that wasn't this habit and it wasn't your fault. Nothing in this book is addressed to that.

If saying no to your partner, or to someone you live with, leads to threats, punishment or fear, please don't treat that as a problem with your phrasing. The NHS describes domestic abuse as being about power and control, and it says you can speak to your GP. In the UK the freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline is open day and night. In an emergency, ring 999.

If the fear goes well beyond requests, so that ordinary conversations, phone calls or being watched while you do things fill you with dread, that may be social anxiety. It's common and it's treatable, and chapter 15 says where to start.

And if the person asking is your manager, I know that a flat no may not be on offer. Chapter 15 deals with that. Nothing here tells you to risk your job over a rota.

The notes at the back give the studies I've relied on and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.