“Really successful people say no to almost everything”
I've been thinking a lot about this a related topic lately -- how much of our lives and the things we find ourselves doing are tasks that are imposed upon us by others.  I'm trying to come up with strategies to minimize this, which I guess is related to "saying no" to a lot of things.  But I'm not sure the ideal path.  Let me give some (non-work) examples:<p>I flew back from Europe on Wednesday, and the airline misplaced my luggage.  To get it back, they've imposed a ton of steps on ME.  "Here's your reference number.  Call our customer support in 24 hours.  Follow-up every day until you get it" is what I was told (and what I'll have to do).<p>It seems unfair that an act that was 0% my fault results in at least several hours of tasks for me.  I have to follow-up.  I have to wait on hold.  I have to spend time thinking and wondering if my luggage will ever show up.<p>How do we avoid this?  Getting angry doesn't work (trust me, they've been yelled at).  Ignoring it doesn't work - no luggage will show up.  So I guess the only real solution would be to have a personal assistant or otherwise hire someone to deal with situation like this for me?  That seems out of reach for most people.<p>All sorts of things are like that -- if someone sues you, they've imposed literally dozens of hours of work and thousands of dollars of expenses on you entirely without your say.  You can delegate as much as you want to a lawyer, but you'll still need to gather documents, think about strategies, and of course pay your lawyer.<p>So how does one really truly say "no" to things & delegate undesirable tasks unless one has enough money to afford such delegation?  I'm not sure I have a good answer to this one yet.<p>Thoughts?