When you want to achieve balance: 10 practical tips for setting boundaries
Let’s face it. At this point, we are way beyond work-life balance and “work” and “life” are way more than blended; they are one in the same. I always thought the phrase “work-life” balance set the wrong expectation. Is work not part of your life; in fact, a huge part of your life?
While we had a commute to separate work from personal life, even that was becoming more compromised. How many of us took calls in the car, worked on presentations on the train or responded to morning emails on the bus. The commute was a physical break between home and office but that time was becoming more and more “blended”.
Without the physical separation between office and home, how do we separate them? Should we separate them or should we just manage the blending better? For me, it isn’t about drawing a hard line between work and home but more about managing the inevitable overlap better. It is finding ways to enable our brains to be able to shift between job and family, work and home.
I think “work-life balance” needs to morph. The word “hybrid” is gaining lots of steam in the working world. Hybrid work environments are being designed so that some of us are in the office and some are not. Some may commute in one to two days week while others will be remote 100% of the time. Hybrid also applies to ourselves. Instead of trying to balance “life” and “work”, we should be figuring out how to reach a steady state of a hybrid life where work and life are intertwined but in a healthy way.
So, with this new approach to work and life, how do we set boundaries? With so much blending going on, how do we not let work take over? For many of us, it already has. We find ourselves answering emails at 10 pm in bed or working on presentations on the weekends because our weeks are too full of meetings. The old 9-5 shift is becoming more and more out of date and we need to strive for a new balance. Here are 10 practical tips I have found to help over the last year.
Design your day in chunks.
9-5 may not survive in our hybrid world depending on your role, of course. I have moved away from thinking about working an 8-hour day but designing my day into chunks. Chunks for the following: Meetings, non-meeting work time, meditation, meals, exercise, reading/researching trends, writing, relaxing. These activities fill my whole day but they are not necessarily consecutive. I have chunks designated to each of these activities and my calendar reflects this.
Pick a stop time.
While I think blending is more the trend, picking a realistic stop time for your work chunks is critical. This may not be until later in the day but to constantly prioritize work over other facets of your life will lead to burnout. Pick a true stop time that works for you. Your day should not end with work, unless you’ve designed your day that way. To prevent burnout, I recommend ending your day with relaxation of some kind not ending with typing responses to emails.
Block your calendar.
For some organizations, this may be a little controversial. Block your calendar for other activities and non-meeting work time. This can be helpful when you don’t want your entire day consumed by meetings. Remember: You can always make a different decision. I get asked if I can take a meeting during a blocked time. If I feel I can or should, then I make a change. In fact, I prefer to be asked instead of just receiving blind Outlook appointments for the only 30 minutes I have open in a day. For some of us, if we don’t block time, we will find ourselves working late and on weekends all the time.
Set expectations to not send or answer emails after a certain time.
This is one of my pet peeves. Unless it is an emergency, and those do happen, I try not to send or respond to emails after my absolute stop time for work, which is 8 pm for me. Work can take over if you let it. We need chunks of our day focused on non-work activities. We are healthier and more focused at work if we aren’t all about work all day long.
Be more thoughtful about meetings.
There is a balance here. In a remote situation, I have felt it important to connect with my team every week one on one. This adds a lot of meeting times to my calendar but it is worth it. Staying connected and providing forums for your team to share and ask questions is important to keep people engaged and productive. However, I have been thinking more about meetings in our current environment as it could be a way to keep people more connected. The problem is they can dominate your calendar leading to work extending way into your non-work time. Just because you’re invited, you don’t have to attend. I used to accept everything. Now, I am more discerning about what I really need to attend vs. what can my team attend and give me a 5-minute update. There are other ways to stay connected than a work meeting. We used to grab coffee with someone. Well, move coffee to virtual coffee. These kind of “meetings” are also important to keep relationships going.
Beware of the flip side of shorter meetings.
I tried an experiment earlier this year where I shortened a bunch of meetings to 30 minutes. What I found happening is everyone did this so instead of having 6 one-hour meetings in a day, I had 12 30-minute meetings. This wasn’t helpful. In fact, I found it more stressful and less productive because I was switching between too many topics in a day. I am all for determining if a meeting really needs to be an hour but shortening to squeeze in more doesn’t solve the problem. I am a big fan of 45-minute meetings. This helps keep you on track but also gives you a passing period before your next meeting. I don’t know about you but I need a coffee refill, a stretch, a minute to stand or a bathroom break before the next one.
Think about who needs to be informed or consulted.
Just as you should consider whether you attend a meeting or not, consider who you are inviting. Truly think about who needs to be consulted on something vs. just informed. Consulted means you need to solicit their opinion or advice. This is best done in a meeting. If you just need to inform someone, consider an email or status update over email or in a Teams site. Status updates do not always require a meeting. This is one way to spare time and set a mini boundary.
Learn the words “no” or “not right now”.
This one is hard. For all you people pleasers (like me), this is really hard. For most of us, we want to be seen as valuable. Valuable may mean high volumes of work but it shouldn’t. Value should be derived from focus and making an impact, which oftentimes means we should focus on 3 projects really well not 12 projects that we do so-so. If you can’t bring yourself to tell someone no, then say how about in 90 days we start or think about ways you can help someone through an hour consulting talk vs. taking on the project for them.
Squeeze in meditation, stretching or breathing.
I am lucky to have an Apple Watch that tells me when it’s time to stand or do one minute of deep breathing. This was my present to myself to keep me thinking about my health when staring at my computer screen. If you don’t have this, set reminders on your phone, book 5 minutes in your calendar or have a post-it note on your desk. Standing, stretching, breathing, looking away from your screen or screens are mini boundaries we can set for ourselves throughout the day to keep ourselves centered. Even stare out the window if you can’t walk outside to give your eyes and mind a quick break.
Planning has become even more important.
For those of you who have been waiting for planners to become vogue again, get out your pens, flags and notepads! In order to make all of this work and fit in our little jigsaw puzzle of a life, we must plan. This does not all happen by accident. I plan my week every Sunday — what I want to accomplish, when I am exercising, when I am working on what project, when I will squeeze in my 15-minute meditation. This may seem very rigid to some but it is a guideline to be used to make your week meaningful. Plans are never set in stone so if you need to adjust, then adjust on the fly. For me, if I don’t write it down and have a task, I will skip it. To keep sane and have boundaries to ensure I am balancing, I need these reminders and schedule.
As we move into a hybrid existence, we need to find ways to stay focused, be productive and not burn out. While “work” and “life” are now pretty blended, we can set mini boundaries through planning, minding our schedules, moving and staring out the window. We can also help others by extending the same courtesy. Realize we are all trying to balance. Minding our schedules and being more thoughtful about meetings will help us all set boundaries better.