Managing our boundaries, managing each other
I am working on a series of articles I’m calling “managing ourselves managing each other.” (Previously I shared a piece on managing our emotions at work.) A big part of managing ourselves is managing access to our time and access to our inner state.
Balance ≠ boundaries
I hear "work/life balance" thrown around a lot, but I think this sets a false expectation that work is somehow not a part of life, that the two could be set side by side on a scale and measured. You spend 40+ hours weekly at work. What balance?
Work/life balance is a lie. It embodies the notion that as long as you can timebox (the bulk of) your time and reserve the rest for the massive amounts of life admin required to keep the fires burning at home, you'll be ok, you should be ok.
I see "work/life balance" as a concession to "always on" work culture our devices and interconnectedness have brought on. But you can't turn it off very easily because these systems tap into our dopamine and adrenaline distribution systems. How do you find balance in a casino?
Rather than looking to balance the unequal or separate the inseparable, I prefer to set boundaries with who and how I engage professionally—to control how much of my time and energy they are allowed to use.
Boundaries come in two forms: emotional and temporal. Because temporal boundaries are the more pressing, we’ll start with them.
Metering out your lifespan
"Time" is an opaque term that undervalues our most precious commodity. Paul Bowles said, “Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. [I]t all seems limitless.” What you're really spending is not “time”—it is your finite lifespan, something no amount of money can ever back. So let’s call it something else: Span, a new currency I invented just for this essay.
You're not "finding time" so much as writing a check for your Span. With each check you write, you have less to spend. Boundaries can help you reign in over-drafting from your Span bank account.
"Work" is also an overburdened word. It means too many things to too many people. I like to think of it as "ways you spend Span in exchange for money, goods, services, goodwill, and future returns on investment.” Something can be work and not result in getting paid—women spend a lot of their Span on children and family members whereas men traditionally spend the bulk of theirs in exchange for money.
Bento box vs river rocks
I like exchanging my Span for money, so I’ve gone all in on my career. As I have gained more responsibility, I’ve protected the working hours my reports set and empowered them to compartmentalize their work so it didn’t distract from rest and relaxation. I helped them create beautiful little bento boxes to organize their lives into, constraints they could trust. But I noticed that I could not keep the same hours myself. Travel, timezones, responsibility, cluster cusses: I kept odd hours and only knew rest between jobs!
For me, working since I was 14, I consider working a set period of hours a luxury. I struggle to "not work." But that's not a problem because I like working! What is a problem is when I don't prioritize anything but work, when I don't set boundaries with the use of my lifespan.
Sharing this observation with a founder friend of mine, she explained that CEOs of companies that employ millions couldn’t possibly work the same 9-5 that their employees enjoy. They are reachable when one of their products explodes, for instance. She went on to explain what I think of as River Rocks.
At a certain point where responsibility courses through your being and becomes a regular part of your thought processes, you might not be able to "find time" for family dinner, for instance. Except there is no such thing as "missing time" that you can "find." Remember, you’re spending Span.
When you don't "find time" to do something, the truth is that you find other things more important/pleasurable and choose to spend your Span on them instead. The business call was more important than blowing out the candles on your kid's cake (perhaps because it paid for the cake). You have to budget Span for the things that you believe are important—or else own that the way you spend your Span is a representation of your innermost priorities.
My friend shared that many executives are unreachable during a set dinner time with their family. Then afterward, back into the fray they go! They set a boundary around when their Span was spent. These are the "rocks" that you ask other people's priorities to flow around.
(Over)sharing of ourselves
People these days suck at setting emotional boundaries at work. It could be the rise of Oversharing Culture on TikTok. It could be that employers have far too long encouraged employees to "bring their whole self to work." Whatever it is, it can be bad news.
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I once went through several losses in a row. My company felt like a family. We were encouraged to "bring our whole selves to work." I shared what I was going through. A few years later, something I shared showed up in a review. I had forgotten it, but my manager had not.
After that incident, I became much more private about my life experiences, not just at work, but also with friends and family. It turns out that "oversharing"—sharing trauma and even positive feelings—can drive people apart as easily as bringing them together for comfort.
I've always overshared—it's how my comics got popular! But after that, I realized you often don't want people to know your innermost state. People can judge you in funny ways you don't expect, like how long you cry or how soon you date after a death in the family.
It is better for people to earn your trust and earn the right to know You. To know someone is to respect them, and respect takes time and investment to grow between people. Sharing too much too soon interrupts this process.
Good boundaries make good neighbors... and better coworkers
There’s pressure to give our Span out in large chunks and to share our inner state constantly. But this is unhealthy. Boundaries help you manage withdrawals from your Span and access to your innermost thoughts and feelings. Controlling access to these is key to growing healthy relationships and ensuring you’re able to show up for others at your best.
Limit Span withdrawals
If you must allow random withdrawals from your Span account—that is you must be generally available because of your responsibilities—set blocks of time aside for yourself, the equivalent of an allowance and an emergency fund:
If people seek your advice regularly, consolidate those withdrawals so they can be made in bulk:
Limit access to your internal state
Oversharing can be a liability if what we share can damage morale, hurt others, or come back to haunt us. If you are thinking about sharing something, this procedure might help you:
If you struggle to keep your feelings inside, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Being in touch with your emotions is the sign of an empathetic person with a capacity for compassion and understanding. If you find you can’t stop sharing something that’s on your mind, try writing it down someplace safe, like a journal with a promise to revisit it with a more appropriate audience later.
I hope this guide to temporal and emotional boundaries is helpful. It can be hard to adjust when your responsibilities grow, and casual chatter becomes something more than it was; when you find you must be more available but still have the same Span bank account to draw from.
If you have any suggestions of your own, I’d love to hear them in the comments.
Tune in next time for a special edition on rupture and repair!