Or just never sign NDAs since they are almost universally egregious and don't benefit you at all to become party to. 99% of the time when you say no, the other party will just shrug and say ok.
I sign, and require signatures, for non-egregious NDAs all the time.
You will quickly find that at outright refusal to sign an NDA will very quickly limit your business options, especially when negotiating between corporate entities.
NDAs are extremely important for businesses to be able to work together on common projects. I work in finance and if I told one of my customers or vendors that we were not going to execute an NDA, the conference call would end very abruptly.
Also consider if the tables were turned and it was you who had the mountains of IP and other liabilities that would be shielded by an NDA.
I've been asked to sign NDAs. "Hey, i got this cool idea, sign my NDA". The couple times I've done that have been... not worth the effort, and never amount to anything. But they're still some mental overhead I have to keep account of for a while.
"We're bringing you in to project X, and we've agreed to payment terms, and project length. Sign this NDA preventing you from sharing our corporate secrets (with some reasonable definition of 'secret') to work on the project". I've generally no problem with those sorts - they are a part of real project/work/life, and generally money is attached.
I've given up dealing with the first sort, and have "lost out on some big opportunities" (their words, not mine) because of the refusal. I've managed to eke out a living nonetheless.
