Last week, I wrote about burnout and why I’m grateful I hit rock bottom. This week, I’ve put together a list of ways you can avoid getting there in the first place by establishing some work boundaries.
The unfortunate reality is that in the US, many people in management positions equate employees setting boundaries with not being a team player, which is basically just a way for them to threaten to fire you if you don’t agree to work like a dog (which they can do if you, like most, have an at-will contract). They can usually fire you for whatever reason they want to give, if they give any reason at all, and retaliatory discharge is not only hard to prove but who has the time, energy and money for that legal battle?
And given that health insurance is tied to employment, the job market sucks and everything is expensive, you can’t afford to lose your job. But you also can’t afford to burn out.
I’m talking Slack, Outlook, Asana, Trello, Zoom – anything that ties you to work outside of your 9-5, remove immediately.
Unless you have a specific contractual agreement in place with your employer where you need to be on call during certain hours or days, there is no good (for you) reason to keep these apps on your phone.
And if you are on call then they should provide you with a work phone, but we all know “should” doesn’t mean “do.”
Your coworkers might be awesome and the booze might be free, but for the love of goodness, don’t shit where you eat.
This is one of those work boundaries that you (hopefully) iron the kinks out of during your 20s. I’m not even talking about work romance, instead I’m talking about the need to keep who you are outside of the office as this delightful little secret only you know about or world only you can enter. That’s because allowing all people everywhere access to all parts of you is a sure-fire way of burning out.
Only you can control access to your energy, as woo-woo as that sounds.
Now maybe you don’t have a lot of friends, you’re on the edges of different friend groups, or you otherwise don’t have much of a social life besides doing things on your own (that counts as social, right?).
This work boundary is even more essential for you because the risk is that (a) work becomes your life and/or (b) you equate “coworker” with “friend.”
Your coworkers (most likely including your work wife) are not your friends, or friends that would stick around for more than a month or two if you were no longer coworkers. They might make you laugh and share your love of pasta, but they are people you only know because you work together. Please also be mindful of oversharing, avoid drinking challenges, and don’t friend request your coworkers.
It is so important to be able to separate who you are from what you do (unless you are in complete alignment with your profession, which most of us aren’t).
Work boundaries exist to (a) keep your employer from overstepping into your private life and (b) keep you from overworking. That only works if you indicate to your employer (and yourself) that your boundaries are firm and non-negotiable.
If you keep making concessions here and there or start working earlier in the day than you’re supposed to because that’s when everyone else can meet (if e.g. you’re temporarily working part time with pre-agreed-to hours), then that signals to your manager/employer that you are malleable and weak when you need to be resolute. The same applies to not working while on vacation, taking a sick day or enjoying PTO. Your word is your bond, to yourself if no one else.
Give them an inch and, in most cases, they’ll take a mile.
You and work wifey probably talk about coworkers, responsibilities and how very different your reality is from the picture painted for you when applying to the role. That’s all well and good until it becomes the only thing you talk about.
If you’re trying to decouple yourself from work and work wife is going on and on about people and things that stress you out, trigger your anxiety, or constantly remind you of trauma, then you need to set her and yourself straight (respectfully). You can’t fight fires on all fronts without living in rock bottom’s basement, so to keep this lovely human in your life, be open and say that you need to limit your conversations about work.
Then you need to hold yourself to that request. It’s easy to talk about work when we’re frustrated and just want to vent and then limit someone else in doing the exact same thing. That’s called a double standard and manipulation, and we’re not doing that.
Vent it out then talk about or do other things that fill your cup instead of fuel the fire.
I saved the best for last. This is something I am still learning but might be the biggest game-changer when it comes to work.
You’re going to be asked to do things in a way that you know are either not best practice or won’t bring the intended result – or worse, will bite the company down the line. If you’ve presented your manager/stakeholder with the situation and why doing X, as requested, will lead to Z (not good) instead of Y and you’re still told to go ahead as directed, make sure you get it in writing (e.g. send a summary email) and then drop it.
This is going to be so hard to do for my fellow overachievers, ambitious good girls and perfectionists – and honestly just those of logical thought – because it requires you to do something you know to be wrong, illogical, not best practice, making more work for the team six months from now, etc. It will destabilize your sense of right and wrong and probably annoy the hell out of you because you were hired to do a good job, right?
Well, apparently you were hired to do a wrong thing well and that’s a pill you’re just going to have to swallow.
If you’ve presented the facts and they’re not willing to listen, then you’re just going to have to adapt and move on. Running into the same wall over, and over, and over again is not going to change a damn thing. It’s just going to break you – mind, body, and spirit.
“Check your ambition,” my family tells me, and I pass the same on to you with this add-on: picking your battles means you’re choosing where to place your energy. If you mentally frame “not fighting certain fights” as “choosing inner peace and sanity,” it might make the going a little easier.
Only a fool fights a battle they’ve already lost, and you’re no fool.
I know it’s hard when you feel like you have to play by their rulebook in order to survive.
If you don’t do what they say and end up losing your job, then you lose your income and health insurance (and forget expensive COBRA), ability to buy food and take out prescriptions, you can’t pay your bills, and have to go on unemployment until you can get another job.
From years of personal experience, I can say that the cost of running ragged until you can no longer function is far greater.
In the scenario above, you are well enough to work somewhere else, but if you burn out at your current job, you’re likely 99% absolutely buggered.
You probably won’t get short term disability unless (a) you have a very understanding doctor who considers your burnout a serious medical issue and (b) the state plays along and grants you disability. That means that if you burn out, you can’t keep working but you’re also unable to get disability, so in order to have a roof over your head, food to eat, and not default on your loans or credit card payments you… move in with your parents? Ask family for financial support?
Preventing burnout is so much better for you than burning out, fighting for disability while dealing with brain fog and exhaustion, and hoping to God it’s approved. Save yourself, and your employer, the headache and cost of burning out by following the work boundaries above.
P.S. In this post, I’ve focused on boundaries to set with coworkers and managers (and yourself in relation to them), but let’s not forget another thing, which is to do things that have absolutely nothing to do with work. That might be working out, dancing to music in the kitchen, reading, writing – basically, hobbies and pleasure-filled activities.
Cutting down on work is only going to balance out your life if you also allow the rest of your life to grow in response.
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