Work-Life Harmony: Setting Effective Boundaries with Narrow Gates

Depending on your situation, you may be able to actively manage a fixed boundary or you need one that has some room for improvement and is directed by aspiration.

Not necessarily about time

Boundaries can be set on many things. It doesn't have to be time. For example, I've known people to get very clear on communication, types of interactions, when and what types of food they eat, as they set their boundaries. For the purposes of this article, I'll focus on time boundaries.

What's most important

Even as you set a time boundary, you need to know what you are protecting and why. It doesn't have to be a current need, but can be an aspirational desire. It all comes down to what is most important to you. A few examples:

• Dinner at home so everyone can sit down together and share their day
• Time to exercise, walk the dog, help the kids with homework before dinner
• Making & eating breakfast with your spouse after Bible study in the morning
• Working less than one evening a week from home and no weekend work

Anchor in identity

The boundary is easier to maintain if you think about it less as time or an activity that you are protecting but about who you are and who you want to be. For example, when a former smoker is offered a cigarette which helps them be more powerful and convicted (even to themself): "I'm trying to quit" or "I'm not a smoker."

As Christians our greatest identity is in relationship to Him. Is there a viewpoint that can help you stand firm after you set this boundary? 

• My body is a temple for Holy Spirit so I need to take care of it.
• I am a child of God and I want my children to feel I treat them that way too.
• I am precious in His sight as my spouse is in mine.

Do you see how that completely changes the importance of the boundary you are setting? As you set your boundary, you may be less likely to allow it to be trampled on. Just as we need to make decisions and have the strngeth of faith to pass through the narrow gate to Heaven, you will also filter your decisions and actions through a narrow gate of what you allow inside that boundary.

Where are you feeling unbalanced?

Sometimes what you want and aspire for seems too far away from the current state. You aren't sure how to prioritize which behavior to put a boundary around that will result in something you can reasonably accomplish. In this case, another approach is to figure out any unbalanced or unhealthy behavior that you are doing related to work and curb it back to what is a reasonable expectation. If you have difficulty identifying any, check in with a loved one that can help you be honest. A few examples to consider, do you need to stop :

• sending emails between 9p - 6a?
• refusing to take at least one day off each week?
• working 60+ hours a week for one job?
• seeing your children sleping more than awake?
• speaking less than a 1000 words in a day to your spouse?
• not taking more than 10 minutes to eat?
• checking your work phone every 30 minutes in case you missed something?

When you engage in these behaviors, what messages are you sending others? You may want to include this as part of what you address as you identify which behaviors to address first.

RELATED: Setting Priorities 

Decide on a primary tactic & framework for your boundary

Once you've determined what is most important to you and why, it is time to make a decision of how you will protect the time for this precious activity. This will be a bit different in every situation. Here are a few common ones.

• Are you worried about total hours?
  • Do you need a set departure time from work? 
  • Do you adjust the settings in calendar and communicate to others, that if you haven't accepted a meeting that you won't be there?
  • Do you need to be actively managing the expectations from others? 

If you desire, meditate on your situation and the metaphor in Matthew 7:13-15 to help you gain perspective.

There were a few periods in my career I was using early mornings to get quiet, focused work done at home. It allowed me to spend evenings with my sweetie and have a bit of coffee with him before heading out for the day. Once people realized I was regularly logging in early for my time zone versus their time zone - it did not take long for meetings to start showing up super early. Yet, my public calendar showed I didn't accept meetings until several hours later, so I had to be very selective about sending emails, accepting calls and meetings in that window before it became something everyone expected of me. 

Framework options

Boundaries don't always have to be as fixed or defined as a fortress or a fence and gate. Think about a balloon - the wall of the balloon separates the air inside and outside. There is a lot of flexibility to keep allowing in more air, but there is a limit before it pops. I'll go through an example similar to this since it is likely less familiar to you than something simpler to assess.

If you are making a fixed boundary, make sure you are setting it for what is reasonable to manage now. Keep the gate narrow. You want to be successful 8 out 10 lines, so you don't get defeated easily. If you set it on your aspirational goal and can only protect your boundary 3 out of 10 times, you'll feel bad about it and it will be harder to change. You'll also be anabling the negative or destructive behavior that you are trying to change. 

Top & Bottom Lines

I was first exposed to the concept of top and bottom lines through Workaholics Anonymous (great resources and support if you need it). These define a flexible range of outcomes and point you toward what you aspire to do and become. As you work towards the aspirational goal (top line), the range of desired behaviors change. For those of you that are familiar with statistical process control - think about this similarly to tightening the control limits based on demonstrated reduction of variability.

Sleep is a simple illustration of how this can work. Your personal minimally functioning bottom line may be 5 hours per night. After a week of that little sleep, you can still safely focus and have reasonable energy. You've been getting by for months on 5-6 hours of sleep during the week. Yet, you aspire to sleep at least 7 hours per night. That gets you feeling awesome! So your initial boundary is "I sleep at least 5 hours, and prefer to get at least 7 hours per night."

Do you see how this differs than saying I want to set a boundary based on the statement "I am trying to get more sleep and want to sleep at least 6 hours per night?" In this scenario, sleeping less than 6 hours still occurs on a regular basis. So as you track your success, there will be more misses and you will either become disheartened or just start ignoring them.

When you are facing a complex or challenging situation, Top & Bottom lines set you up for a stronger mindset where there is greater rate of success and more motivation to continue to improve.

Continuing with this example, top and bottom lines means that you won't intentionally allow anything to infringe on this boundary. Of course, there may be a horrible travel day that goes awry that gets you less sleep than that. If you get less than 5 hours of sleep, you need to immediately triage what happened, rally your support resources, figure out how you will recover and get back on track. Maybe, you have a pre-defined plan that if this happens you work a half day so you can catch up on sleep the next night. Over time as you get better routines, you can slowly change the range to be 6-7 hours of sleep. Let's get into how to set this up.

Bottom Lines

Bottom lines define the base condition, the line that you do not want to cross. Think of it as a red stop light. Technically you could blow through it, but your safety and that of others is at risk. Bottom lines can be written as negative or affirmative statements. These should be set up for realistic & successful achievement, rather than for a higher likelihood of failure. Examples include:

• On Monday & Wednesday, I leave work for the gym by 6p.
• I do not allow work to encroach upon the time I commit to be with family, including 7p - 9p Monday to Friday.
• I do not work more than 60 hours per week and no more than 12 hours per day Monday to Friday.

Set it based on your tolerance for what happens if this bottom line boundary is crossed - do you and your loved ones agree it is acceptable if once a week you break a commitment or does it need to be less frequent? Be realistic about what is achievable so you have a solid point to improve upon.

Don't forget to set up your plan for if you have a miss of the bottom line. It is better to plan in advance when you have a clear head and feel less pressure on how you will get back on track. Every time the bottom line is crossed, you want to triage it and figure out what to learn from the situation. To ensure you stay on the path of improvement, you don't want to get used to accepting that this boundary can be crossed or trampled on by your choices. This keeps the gate narrow so life affirming choices are encouraged instead of many potentially destructive ones.

Top Lines

Top lines define the aspirational goal or vision. They remind you of what you want and what you are working toward. You want to combine it with that identify statement we discussed earlier. Examples include:

• My body is a temple for Holy Spirit. I need to take care of it, so I will spend 2 hours at the gym through the workweek.
• I am a child of God and I want my children to feel I treat them that way too. I will do something fun that they pick with my children every day of the week.
• I am precious in His sight as my spouse is in mine. I will be home more, help more & have date night, so I will not work more than 55 hours per week and no more than 10 hours per day Monday to Friday.

Do you see more clearly how the top and bottom lines complement each other? They give you a clear current state and future state and have a motivational factor built in. Going back to the Workaholic's Anonymous Book of Recovery - "While our bottom lines free us from pain, our top lines promise us joy and fulfillment."

Reinforce & Keep the Gate Narrow

As a reminder, the reason you are setting a boundary is to set yourself up sucessfully for change. The less likely you are to allow an activity or someone to infringe on your boundary, the more successful you are. This applies for both fixed and top / bottom line boundaries.

Others around you only know that you have a boundary if you are proactively communicating it and have reinforcing processes and systems. Writing all of this down and putting it on a Post-It Note on your computer or in an electonic notification is not going to lead to successful change. Once you set your boundary, inform your allies and ask them to help you brainstorm on what actions you need to take to be successful.

On a final note, you probably want to have a tracker of some sort - old fashioned paper or a virtual task tracker. When you hit a rough spot, it shows you the improvements so you can factually address any lies your mind or feelings may tell you about how "you can't change" or "you never get it right." If you are doing top and bottom line styles of boundaries, it can also help you decide when you can confidently move the bottom line closer to the top line.

RELATED: How to Maintain Boundaries 

Are You Willing to Experiment for Yourself?

Try these tips out for a few weeks and see how they work for you. At the end of each week you'll want to check in about how the approach felt and how it is working for you. There are many ways to protect what is most precious to you and to achieve your core identity, so you just need to determine what works best. This is not a test of will-power! Nor is it about being aggressive to others to reinforce your fortress wall. Setting & maintaining boundaries a process. When you need help or get in a bind, a little bit of prayer and God-fidence can give you strength and help you make the next right decision.

If you have not worked with setting boundaries before, you probably want to pick a small one to start with to build success and momentum. In each of the examples above, it is all about improving departure times so an initial baby-step boundary of one of those could be:

I set an alarm for 5:30p to finalize my thoughts and close & save files, where I shut down the computer by 5:45p because I am precious in His sight as my spouse is in mine. I will be home more, help more & regularly have date night. I aspire to no work more than 55 hours per week and no more than 10 hours per day Monday to Friday.

Structuring your boundary with a clear anchor and behavior makes it very specific, so you are more likely to follow through. As you train and build the habit, this structure also gives you room in case if you need to clear your desk, organize for the next day, finalize call backs and other followups, or do a brain dump. Then you can make steady improvements from there to "I leave my office space by 6p" and move on to "I am in my car (or living room if you work from home) by 6p." This approach trains you to a positive growth mindset, recognizing each of the small little wins and shows what is achievable.

RELATED: TBD - Habits

My hope for you...

With these small tips and tricks, I pray that you are able to stop feeling like:

• your clendar and others are running your day
• others have more say in how you spend your time than you do

With practice and training with a set process (not trying harder) it becomes easier to make more changes in how you work. There is a substantial return on investment for the effort to establish and maintain time boundaries.

As you fulfill your commitments and protect your boundaries, you quickly start experiencing greater work-life harmony and feeling less stress. Boundaries are not just for you to manage work and getting home from work at a reasonable hour. The real reason you are doing this is to make time for relationships and activities that nourish your body, mind, and spirit, so you thrive and flourish with the life that God intends for you.

Interested in this approach and want to learn more about how you can go deeper into using your existing time management skills to help you improve your work-life harmony and reducing your stress?  Book a free consultation.

If my references to Workaholic's Anonymous has you reflecting on your own behavior and choices, do check out their resources. I also suggest Bryan E Robinson's books. Feel free to email or use the consultation link to meet with me, if you just need to talk to someone about what is going on.