Setting boundaries and work-life balance

For some people, though, setting boundaries is difficult, especially when technology puts your instant messenger, email and all your work documents right at your fingertips 24/7. However, as you know, boundaries are important for your mental health. Without them, you could easily work all day every day—and no one (not even your boss—and especially not your friends and family) would be happy about it.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few life hacks that can help even the boundary-averse create a better work-life balance.

Your Outlook can change everything

Spend less time organizing your life and more time enjoying it with Outlook

Learn more

1. Go beast mode on your calendar.

When it comes to setting healthy boundaries, sometimes you have to be aggressive—really aggressive. And there’s no better place to go “full beast mode” than with your calendar. Here, you can block time for work projects, meetings, workouts, lunch dates, personal appointments and the rest of your life. And you can set reminders so even if you’re totally engrossed in a project, you’ll know when it’s time to switch gears and move on. If you’re prone to running late, give yourself an extra 10 to 15 minutes on the front and back ends of each calendar item so you can have a little padding and can still take time for your work and your life.

2. Shut it down. Shut it all down.

Ideally, you’d have enough self-control to backburner your work when you’re off and your personal tasks when you’re at work. But if you don’t (and not many of us do), try silencing your work apps at night and on the weekends, and silencing your personal apps—especially your social media apps—while you’re at work. You can, of course, unsilence any app at any time, but if you can trick yourself into thinking you can’t, it can go a long way toward helping you achieve a healthy work-life balance.

3. Set some house rules.

Whether you live with a roommate, a partner, your family or you live alone, there’s one house rule that can help you maintain a better work-life balance: No phones or laptops after, say, 6 p.m. (or whenever you eat dinner). At the cutoff time (unless it’s an absolute emergency), put your devices in another room to charge. Then sit down to dinner and talk, actually talk, to the person (or people) you live with. Or, if you live alone, go outside to eat or kick back on the sofa and watch a movie while you have dinner. Yeah—your TV is an electronic device, but it’s different. It’s not usually one you use for work.

After dinner, leave your devices where they are and play a game, read a book, or find a new hobby and relax before hitting the sack. Odds are good that by avoiding your devices before bed you’ll sleep better, wake up more refreshed and be a better employee and person because of it.

4. Find your routine.

If there are things you want to do every day at work and in your personal life—create a routine that lets you accomplish them first. Love to sweat first thing in the morning? Get your workout in before you start your work day. Need to answer client emails before anything else? Set aside 30 minutes first thing every day. Need to call your kids after school? Set a meeting every day at 3:30 p.m. to touch base. Gotta pick up your pup from day camp at 5:30 p.m.? Give yourself a hard stop at work at 5 p.m. and do it. Just be sure to keep these tasks/appointments sacred and immovable. If you don’t, you run the risk of letting the chaos of life dictate every move you make—and that will drag you down and get you off track.

5. Say, what?

Let’s just get this out of the way. This isn’t going to be easy. But it’s hands down one of the most important ways to set healthy boundaries for a better work-life balance. Create a communication agreement.

It might sound daunting and overly formal, but a communications agreement doesn’t have to be either. It’s basically just you keeping “office hours” and letting the people you know that unless tragedy is about to befall your team or company, you’re unavailable for meetings, email responses, instant messaging or texting from, say, 5 p.m. until 7 a.m. And letting your family know that unless there’s bloodshed or some other legitimate emergency, you won’t be available to talk or text between, say, 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. (save for your lunch hour, if you so choose).

This might all seem a bit like overkill, but this is your life and your work—and both of them matter. By setting healthy boundaries that allow for a work-life balance, you’ll learn to prioritize what’s important, while also keeping your career, relationships and mental health in check.