Let your yes be yes and your no come from deep in your belly.
You’re welcome to ask me to do things, but I’ll typically say no. This includes panels, webinars, edited volumes, program committees, live news interviews, professional organizations, peer reviews for commercial publishers, high-school and undergraduate research projects, advisory boards, study committees, conferences outside my fields, and podcasts. I do make exceptions for things that I think are particularly interesting or important, but my baseline is no.
The reasons are many. I’m overcommitted. I’m tired. I’m an introvert. I’m a homebody. There are dozens of videogames I want to play, and hundreds of books I want to read. I don’t enjoy flying, but I do enjoy hanging out with my family. Most of all, “I have so much work to do.”
As Donald Knuth says, “I must stay home most of the time and work on yet more books that I’ve promised to complete.” Most of the time, the most important and fulfilling thing I can do with my available professional time and energy is to sit in a room by myself and write up an idea. It’s the one thing I’m any good at in a way that isn’t interchangeable with the way that dozens of other people are.
In short, it isn’t you; it’s me. Some scholars prefer to live in constant motion. Not me. Some will happily fly across the country for an all-day convening on a week’s notice. Not me. If you have a thing you need someone for, you’re probably better off asking one of them.
I’m more likely to say “yes” to the following, which tend to be some combination of important to others, lighter lifts, and closer to my core interests:
All of these are subject to my time constraints, no matter how much I want to do them. It helps if I don’t have to travel or participate in planning meetings to do the thing. When I take something on, I generally volunteer my services to universities, nonprofits, and news organizations, except for usual and customary honoraria or reimbursements. I generally do not perform unpaid labor for for-profit entties.