The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Up to each and every one of us

But, this new­ly won free­dom also means that we have to set up nec­es­sary bound­aries and delim­i­ta­tions by our­selves. Sure, some bound­aries are set ​”from the top down”, so to speak, such as Volk­swa­gen set­ting a stop to email­ing out­side of work­ing hours a few years ago, but in my expe­ri­ence, the respon­si­bil­i­ty for set­ting healthy and con­struc­tive bound­aries for your­self usu­al­ly falls on you as an employee.

Ene­mies and floods

You can com­pare these bound­aries and delim­i­ta­tions with the walls and mounds you build to pre­vent some­thing from spread­ing and invad­ing an area you wish to pro­tect. Around Viking-vil­lages such as Bir­ka, there were always city walls that defend­ed the city or vil­lage from invaders. The Nether­lands have built dikes, dams and flood­gates for many cen­turies to pro­tect them from storm surges from the ocean. To some of us, work is con­stant­ly threat­en­ing to flood our per­son­al time and space and claim both for work instead of what we orig­i­nal­ly had intend­ed — if we do not set a stop to it ourselves.

You should, there­fore, build some walls so that you can con­trol what you do where and when. What kinds of walls? Well …

Do this

Decide:

1. When you work and when you do not work — At what time do you start work (even if you do not work set hours or have a flex­i­ble sched­ule)? To what extent will you work at night and at home? Always? Nev­er? Some­times? If so, how often and dur­ing what cir­cum­stances? Will you read and process a few emails on the com­muter train (some­thing which a group of British sci­en­tists recent­ly sug­gest­ed should be includ­ed in your reg­u­lar work­ing hours)? When you work from home, do you do so any­where in the house or in a des­ig­nat­ed place so that you still to some extent sep­a­rate your work from pri­vate life?
2. When you turn the faucets on or off — Emails are flow­ing into your inbox at a steady pace and mes­sages and oth­er noti­fi­ca­tions are giv­ing off sounds at reg­u­lar inter­vals. When and how do you open and go through your dif­fer­ent chan­nels for incom­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion? How often you do so is up to you, but accord­ing to researchers at MIT, UC Irvine and Microsoft, the per­son who only opens their com­mu­ni­ca­tion-chan­nels on their own and con­scious ini­tia­tive often feel they get more done dur­ing their days than the peo­ple who open their inbox as soon as they hear a noti­fi­ca­tion sig­nal­ing a new incom­ing email.
3. How many meet­ings you have — Meet­ings tend to fill the cal­en­dar to the brim. Build a wall that helps you reg­u­late the num­ber of meet­ings you agree to and keep them on a rea­son­able lev­el. Will you set a max­i­mum num­ber of meet­ings per day, after which you block the remain­ing time so that no new requests are sent for more meet­ings? Will you make one day a week com­plete­ly free from meet­ings? Can you agree on some­thing with your col­leagues con­cern­ing meet­ings that will make things eas­i­er for all of you?

If you won­der how I have set up bound­aries, I can briefly tell you that I work hard and at a high pace dur­ing the days when I trav­el and am not at home which means I can get Fri­days off com­plete­ly. I only open the inbox and oth­er chan­nels for com­mu­ni­ca­tion when I delib­er­ate­ly choose to and have set my meet­ing-lim­it to hav­ing two phys­i­cal meet­ings or three short­er phone meet­ings at most every day.

As you want it

If you build your walls or set your bound­aries con­scious­ly, your work­days will not just ​”turn out the way they do”, but instead become more to your lik­ing and accord­ing to your pref­er­ences — both at work and in terms of your per­son­al life. You will be in more con­trol of your work and sit­u­a­tion at work, which a study done a few years ago con­clud­ed was a mat­ter of life and death to some people.

What’s your way?

Have you set any oth­er bound­aries, built dikes, or estab­lished oth­er flood­gates than those I have men­tioned here? If you have, feel free to write me an email!

(Do you know how to make struc­ture become a facil­i­ta­tor rather than an inhibitor?)