If you say yes to everyone, eventually you’re saying no to yourself without noticing.

Time is the one thing that cannot be topped up. Every yes spends a block of it, and because the asks arrive one at a time, each one looks affordable. The accounting only becomes visible later, when the thing you actually wanted to do has no hours left anywhere in the week. Nobody asked you to give those up; you simply never defended them.

Put your own two things in the week before anyone else gets a vote: the practice, the writing, the sleep. Then answer requests around them. When something has to go, let it be somebody else’s optional thing rather than yours.