Having trouble maintaining work boundaries?
Build habits to help you find balance.

About two years ago, a speaker at a training introduced me to the idea that attempting to separate work from life, as in “work-life balance,” was unreasonable. I agree; work is part of life. At a minimum, we spend about a third of our lives working and, if we have healthy habits, a third sleeping. This idea of work-life balance then leaves us with the notion that labor takes away from “life” and makes us judge ourselves when more of our life “time” is consumed by paid work.

Conversely, the saying “if you do what you love, you will not work a day in your life” also sets false expectations. Most jobs are profit and results-driven endeavors. Because of its transactional nature, it is unavoidable to feel apprehension, even when we are passionate about what we do. If you were to, for example, volunteer the same work you do, most of the stress would probably go away because the financial and formal evaluation of your performance would be gone.

Additionally, maintaining good time management habits is even more challenging with the pandemic and remote work becoming the norm. Tending to your children, picking up dry cleaning, and filling your car’s tank is no longer limited to after work hours or weekends. In the same manner, work time spills into your evenings, making it feel like it never stops. 

Unfortunately, since we humans are wired to be social creatures, our jobs’ perceived internal and external pressures feel stressful. This is because the neurons that feed our need for approval and belonging are linked to our pain systems. Setting boundaries is easy — maintaining them is difficult. To beat this instinct, self-regulation and pursuing internal clarity are essential.

Here are a few guidelines you can follow to try to build a routine that allows you for enough play, relax and recharge time without the thought of work following you everywhere you go:

(for an extended description of these guidelines check out my article published in Brainz Magazine.)

1. Try to wake up every day around the same time and set a morning routine that allows your brain to awaken gently.
2. Set a time to start your workday and try to stay away from doing work before then.
3. Separate time for activities that require focus in your calendar and stick to it.
4. Separate two or three blocks of time during the day to respond to emails and resist the urge to look in between those times.
5. To manage external expectations, be sure that you are clear and consistent about your available times for work-related requests.
6. Set guidelines to communicate with your team and with those you are serving.
7. Divide your never-ending to-do list into micro and macro lists.
8. Allow a 15-30 min buffer between meetings to write your notes and get your follow-up started.
9. Decide in advance what time you will end your workday.
10. If you are a manager, show by example. Do not contact your team after work hours or on weekends.

As I mentioned in my previous article on burnout, the pandemic has caused many to reconsider the value of work as we knew it. Industries are suffering the consequences of people understanding that they cannot blindly comply with the demands imposed by our old way of working. I think that eventually, things will settle down, but will we be better off when this happens? I believe that we could be as long as we learn to balance the emotional toll our job has on us, so it does not interfere with rest and recovery time.