Say No Nicely

I was figuring where my time goes, was working long hours for the past few days for a push to make a deadline, and something unexpected that came along, was working all the hours God sends by giving in to almost every request, trying to satisfy every demand. And now I need to stop this kind of behaviour by saying no nicely, in a way that nobody takes offence.

So how would I do that?

Turn off the thing on my computer that goes 'bing' when an email arrives and get into the habit of only checking emails four times everyday. Reason being that we are not email answering machine and email is a tool that we use. This can be difficult, and I accept that different job may be different. What I want to do is to get myself focusing on what is really important than the little things, which could achieve more by working less. No one ever said life was easy, but it does not really have to be this hard.