When discussing the goal of balanced living with a client, one of the conversation topics always turns toward how many hours they’re spending on work.
More specifically, I often find that when someone spends excessive amounts of time on work-related tasks outside their scheduled work hours, they inevitably begin feeling stressed and anxious. These feelings of stress and anxiousness can eventually lead to burnout, where a person can become physically ill because of their job.
Checking emails outside work hours, taking work home and staying up late to complete it, returning work-related calls during family time, and so on.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Just because your boss sent you an email doesn’t mean you have to answer it late at night. And if you find yourself saying ‘yes’ to sitting on every committee and “special projects” working group, then you might have to start putting more explicit boundaries around your work duties and work hours.
And you can take a lesson from your experience of playing a sport.
Work and Play Within a Boundary
If you’ve ever played or watched any sport, then you understand the concept of boundaries.
Regardless of the sport (e.g., soccer, football, tennis, hockey), the area of play is defined by some physical boundary. For example, the boundary is a rectangular field in soccer and American football. In hockey, it’s an ice rink. Likewise, tennis, boxing, and badminton have a defined area in which athletes must perform.
Whenever the ball goes outside the boundary, then the game stops. You can’t play outside of the defined space.
The point is that the athlete does their “work” within that confined area and for a certain amount of time. If the time expires, the athlete doesn’t keep playing. The game stops when time runs out, or a particular score is reached.
In the same way, when you are performing your work, you need to do your task to the best of your ability within the allotted time.
When the workday is over, you need to treat it like an athlete treats a match. Perform your best during the game, and don’t use all of your energy to play outside the allotted time and space. Doing so will put you at risk of performing poorly the following day.
There Will Always be Exceptions. Just Don’t Make it the Norm.
There are always exceptions to this rule, though. Just as a match might go into extra time, there are situations when a person must work extra hours to complete a particular project.
For example, there are times throughout the year, or a person’s career, when they might have to work extra hours because of exceptional circumstances. Those situations are exceptions, though, and are not the norm.
Just be cautious, though, and make sure that those situations of extra unpaid work don’t become the norm. If so, you could be heading towards burnout and an imbalanced life.
Be clear about when you will make exceptions and what the norm will be at this point in your life. Then, do your best to work and play within those boundaries.
The clearer you are about your work schedule, the more likely you will live a more balanced and fulfilling life and the less likely you are to experience burnout and work-related stress.
Richard
**If you would like some help in setting boundaries at home and at work, connect with one of our therapists. They’d be more than happy to help you.