In my medical practice, availability kills value. If you're easily reachable by colleagues and patients, your attention will be at the mercy of their whims. The nonimportant matters get brought up just cause it matters to them but not for you.
From their perspective, you're the only one they've talked to and what's important to them has to be made important to you, you just have to get it. From your perspective, this one person reaches you, then another, then another and so on. You got multiple people asking you favors, questions, and whatever and suddenly you find yourself not being able to do anything for yourself because you became everyone's bitch.
And this is why people with people pleasing problems feel they have no control, they perpetuate a cycle of being available. Someone else's emergency doesn't have to be yours.
I'm not saying purposely ignoring indiscriminately people just to make yourself look busy. I'm saying you have to be doing something worthwhile for your time building yourself while being unavailable for others.
Keep your contacts limited and who can reach you go through some hoops to make it matter. You want to book an appointment? you had to go through someone's secretary, pay for something first or do whatever that takes resources away from you just to get someone else's time, then that transaction becomes important. If it didn't matter enough, they'll just skip the concern.
If less people have access to you, you get more time for yourself and do stuff that make yourself valuable even more. What some people get wrong is the part where they actually need to spend some time building themselves up. For students, it can be skipping some hanging out time with friends and do actual studying. Look buys and act the part, it sends a message.
Think of people you had to set up an appointment, prepare a letter and organize a time and venue just to be in their company versus someone you can readily call. The former conditions you that your time with them matters while the latter conditions you that there's always a next time and there's less effort to ask for that next time.
What I did:
Turned down invites. Deactivated accounts or removed some contacts on social media. Be less responsive to random shenanigans and frivolous concerns. Redirect the time that could've been spent socializing to attending seminars or working. While my social life suffers, my career progresses and that advancement gets me paid and introduces me to those that have advanced higher in my related field. And those new opportunities get me new connections I couldn't possibly get had I not made some lifestyle changes.
Thanks for your time.
