In the past, I’ve written about giving myself permission to refuse work-related requests. Since then, as a part-time teacher and freelance editor and writer, I’ve improved my process for deciding whether yes or no is the right answer for a new assignment. Here’s what I’ve learned to do:

1. Interview the offer, not just the person making it. Few people accept an opportunity without first asking the person who’s offering it what she expects in terms of time commitment, deadlines and other fundamentals. What matters just as much, though, is having a personal dialogue with the project itself. That means imagining yourself doing the work day in and day out. Does the idea of dealing with the assignment’s many moving parts make you dizzy, or, on the flip side, does the project seem like a prescription for procrastination? Look the offer in the eye and ask, “Do I really like you?”

2. Identify the stakeholders’ stakes. You need to know which people have an investment in the results and whom you’ll be dealing with day to day. The tendency, however, is to assume that once you identify the key people, everything else about them will be clear. That’s often not so. What stakeholders want out of a project sometimes doesn’t match, or even complement, the official roles they play. Indeed, that might be why someone new—you—is being asked to step in. This is relevant to how you do your work and may affect your decision about whether to do it at all.

3. Know the history and size up the future. Any project, even an apparently brand-new one, has a history. Getting information about a project’s past, and about where things are headed, is essential to understanding the big picture and deciding whether you should participate.

4.  Look at your whole palette. Clearly, the biggest issue is time, but that’s not the only factor. For example, you may decide for or against a commitment based on variety: Am I doing too much of the same thing right now or, perhaps, too many different things? That question might seem self-indulgent, but the realities of monotony on the one hand, or of feeling scattered on the other, can have very practical consequences.

Steven DeMaio teaches English and math to adults at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Somerville Center for Adult Learning Experiences in Somerville, Massachusetts.