be nice but honest. Over the years, we’ve heard about many tricky techniques for deflecting requests, making up excuses, or deferring indefinitely, and we’ve tried some of them. But they don’t feel good, and they’re not honest. Worse, they just delay the hard decision until a later time, and those half choices can weigh you down, sticking to you like barnacles on the hull of a boat. So ditch the tricks, shed the barnacles, and tell the truth.
