Work-Life Balance Doesn't Exist. Here's How to Actually Change Your Life.
Before the Covid pandemic, you were battling to ‘balance’ work and life, and that’s when work and life were at least separated geographically. Now you aren’t sure if you are living at work or working from home.
If you are spending your days searching for this elusive concept of balance and feeling resentful that you aren’t showing up in the calendar, it’s time to set stricter boundaries around your time.
You don’t resent the other person. You resent the fact you gave away your ‘yes’ too quickly.
Practices like meditation, journaling and exercise are excellent for managing your stress levels, but without the self-discipline to make time for them guilt-free, you will most likely never get to them.
Are you unable to say no for fear of upsetting someone or doing anything necessary to avoid conflict?
What if you reframed guilt? Instead of guilt making you feel you have let someone down, what if it becomes a compass that you’re on the right track by putting your own needs first?
Guilt is the result of no longer letting yourself down.
Boundaries are about consciously designing the contents of your life. Your calendar is the visual representation of your priorities and highest values. If I looked at your calendar for the next two weeks, would I get a sense of what matters to you?
Setting boundaries is how you shift from being the victim of your calendar to the architect of your world. Here are some thoughts on how to take charge and take the reins on managing your boundaries around work and personal time:
What are your non-negotiables?
2020 has enabled you to step into this year with clarity on your non-negotiables. Reflect back to last year and ask yourself what aspects are you no longer willing to tolerate?
Perhaps this is the year of the lunch break. Did you ever get to eat lunch at a table, or was it inhaled out of a Tupperware in five minutes? Or was lunch a cup of coffee between endless meetings?
Did you make time for the activities that genuinely refuel and energise you, or did you base your days around other people’s urgencies?
Now that you know what matters, it’s time to set boundaries to ensure you have a novel experience and learn that self-neglect is not a strategy for your success.
Take your calendar and block out a lunch break every day, even if it is twenty minutes.
Block out time for your self-care and your planning time. Make the heading of the slot — Meeting with EXCO. You are the executive committee which is the only way to ensure your days are based on your priorities rather than your inbox.
It is up to you to set boundaries around your time; as Greg McKeown says:
“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”
Set a quitting time.
The physical environment of the office helped you to distinguish your work role from your personal time. Now that you are in one environment, you need to take ownership of when your workday begins and ends.
Setting the time is not enough; you need to have the self-discipline to commit to this. If your quitting time is 6 PM, you need to permit yourself to disconnect entirely and not check in with the office every hour.
The quitting time is about your recovery and recharge. If you continue to check-in obsessively, it will feel like having every single app open on your phone. Your battery will be drained, and you start the next day with your internal energy tank in reserve.
Setting a quitting time is not only for you but your family. Allow yourself to read a book or play with the kids without the guilt. It was bad enough when you felt guilty about being in the office all day.
Guilt also creeps in because you may have a belief that stillness equals stagnation. The thought of not ‘being productive’ is what prevents you from taking your recovery time seriously. If you want to do an online course unrelated to work, give yourself the freedom and space to do it.
You do not need a return on investment for every moment of the day.
The result of one working/living space is that you encounter more interruptions than usual. Accept it. Avoid the internal narrative that you don’t deserve to switch off because it felt like you achieved nothing in the day. You do not need to earn your kindness and rest time.
Have a ritual to transition.
Without the physical environment change to create your boundaries, you need to set up rituals to help you transition mentally. Here are some suggestions for transition rituals to move you from work to personal mode:
Change your shoes: — you will never be inspired to start work in your slippers
Have a dedicated wardrobe for work and recovery time — you cannot motivate yourself in your weekend tracksuit
Listen to a guided morning and evening meditation
Call a friend or parent to signal the start or end of the day — especially if you used to call them on the commute
Use doorway cues — when you enter your workspace, use the doorway to prompt you to move into work or personal mode
Have a shower/bath
Change environments: walk outside, do not just walk from the bedroom to the kitchen
Have a theme song for the start and end of your workday
Close your outlook and notifications — this is a good comfort challenge to commit to the end of the day
Set an alarm — even if you decide 17:30 is the end of your workday, you might still be working past this because you want to finish off some last-minute emails. Setting the alarm interrupts you and creates closure to your workday.
Insert boundaries on when and how often you check your messages and email.
With every great intention to get the maximum return on every moment, you may be a self-interrupter.
Consider the amount of WhatsApp chats you have on your phone. There is a chat for your family, friends, work, school, extramural activities — it’s endless.
Whenever your phone pings with a new message, you immediately stop what you’re doing to check-in. Multiply this over the day, and no wonder you feel like you got nothing done.
Take ownership and set your boundaries on when and how often you check these messages. I mute most of my chats because I want to decide when it suits me to check-in and reply. Most of the time, these messages are nothing significant, but you willingly give away your time and attention.
Consider how many times you interrupt yourself by checking your emails. Multitasking research proves it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to our original task. To create better hours, set firm boundaries on when and how often you check your mails.
In the 4- Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss recommends you check mails at designated times during the day so you can make progress on your actual work. I know you are terrified of missing something important, but they will call you if it’s urgent.
Consider that every time you check in to your inbox and messages, it is another decision. In psychology, Decision Fatigue says that we have one tank for all the daily decisions we need to make from what to have for dinner to the critical project at work.
According to an article on techtello.com, “decision fatigue leads to poor decision-making — we show reluctance to make trade-offs, fall back to simple choices and may even find it difficult to exercise self-control after making a series of decisions”.
“If your work requires you to make hard decisions all day long, at some point you’re going to be depleted and start looking for ways to conserve energy. You’ll look for excuses to avoid or postpone decisions. You’ll look for the easiest and safest option, which often is to stick with the status quo”, says Roy Baumeister in Willpower.”
The missing piece.
Setting your boundaries is the straightforward part. Anyone can create blocks of time in the calendar. The key lies in showing up to yourself. If you set your quitting time for 6 PM, but you are still checking emails at 8 PM instead of doing the kids' bedtime stories, you will burn out.
Breaking your boundaries is breaking a promise. You are fantastic at keeping the promises you make to other people, but what about the promises you make to yourself?
When you give away your ‘yes’ too quickly, you are inadvertently saying no to something that matters more to you. A more significant consequence is you dent your confidence and self-esteem, not to mention you create a leak in your energy tank.
Never mind feeling bad if you take time for yourself; ask yourself what will happen if you don’t take time for yourself. What is the cost of your inaction to honour the slots for yourself in the calendar?
I give you full permission to feel maximum guilt because at least you know you are heading in the right direction.
Here’s to setting your boundaries,
Warm wishes
Lori