The Career Consigliere

Episode 33: Work-Life Boundaries

• America's White Collar Wise Guy • Episode 33

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Today, the average person has more things competing for their time than ever before.  And for those in the corporate world, work tends to be very high on that list.  But if we're not careful about where work ends and personal time begins, we can wind up in a bad situation in no time at all.

In this episode, you'll learn the importance of maintaining boundaries between work and personal life, and how to ward off anything that threatens your ability to do so.  Enjoy!

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Whaddaya hear, whaddya say?  Welcome to episode 33 of the Career Consigliere podcast: your no frills, no BS forum for navigating the corporate job scene.  We’re back with you once again for what we hope to be a highly informative and engaging half an hour, or so!  Today’s episode will be a natural extension of the last one, which was all about remote work.  Yes, we’ll be talking about the boundaries between work and home life.  Especially as remote work becomes more and more popular, a lot of the lines between home time and work time have become very blurred.  As anyone living in the modern world knows, boundaries are an important component of a healthy life, in EVERY way (not just work).  So, we’re going to talk about how these boundaries should look, so that you can prevent work from literally taking over your life.   Lots to do today, so podcast land:  let’s get on it!

You’ll notice right away that I don’t use the word “balance” when talking about the line between home and work life.  That’s usually how you hear it pitched:  “work/life balance”.  Quite simply put, it refers to the ratio of time that a person spends working vs. living their regular life outside work.  Now this can mean lots of different things for different people depending on the nature of their work.  But my audience is those out in the corporate world doing the office-hybrid hustle, so that’ll be the basis for a good part of what we’ll talk about today. I’ve never been a fan of the term “balance” when it comes to this, because it implies that work is equally as important as everything else in your life.  Think about it:  such a broad term “work/life balance” – are we to accept this at face value?  That there’s work, and then all other aspects of life?  Seems a bit oversimplified,  if you want my god’s honest opinion.

Let’s break it down simply by ratios.  We’ll assume that you work a standard, 8-hour day at whatever corporate job you have.  Let’s also remember that most people in the corporate world aren’t required to work weekends.  So, 8 hours x 5  days a week gives you your standard 40 hours.  In a full calendar week, we have 168 hours.  Let’s say you sleep 7 hours a night (that’s about average for most people).  We take 7x7 to get 49 hours of sleep in a week (let’s just round up to 50 to make it easy), and deduct that from 168.  So that leaves us with 128 total waking hours in a week, and work only accounts for 40 of them.  So, after that little arithmetic journey, we’re left with the reality that work accounts for just over 31% of our waking hours:  still have the other 69% that we’re NOT working.  And you wanna talk to me about work-life BALANCE?  Put 69 and 31 on a seesaw together:  69 wins every time – so where exactly do you see “balance” here?  

Now this is how healthy, principled people like you and I see it.  However, unfortunately, that’s not how a lot of people tend to roll.  Sadly, there are a lot of corporate folk out there that work a lot more than 40 hours in a week.  And a big reason for this, if you want my honest opinion, is remote work capabilities.  We celebrated remote work in episode 32, and I’m not backtracking or trying to contradict myself.  However, one major negative of remote work is that it gives your organization much easier access to you.  Almost everyone gets a laptop these days when they join a company, and in many cases a phone as well.  All you need is a decent wifi connection, or as little as 2 bars of cell service, to be plugged in to your organization’s network.  In the past, office workers had to be physically present to do their jobs:  they had those big clunky desk top computers with the monitors that weighed 30 pounds each and took up 2/3 of your desk space – remember?  All that space for a computer with a whopping 7 gigs of hard drive space:  MY how far we’ve come!  But those monstrosities were our friends, because when that was the kind of equipment you had, you had to be physically present in order to work.  But now, with everything going mobile, the remote capabilities give companies a lot more access to you, basically whenever they want, and that can get real problematic, real quick.

Here's a personal story for you:  grab some popcorn and a soda for this one.  The job I was working at the time of this story was your classic corporate hybrid gig, and I had both the laptop and the company phone to go with it.  Also, and this was my own stupidity, at the time I was using the company phone as my personal phone, and my manger knew this.  Why pay for a phone when I had one handed to me, right?  And for the most part it was fine, until one day when there was a situation that crossed the line.  Here’s the backstory:  I took some time off around the holidays that year:  the company actually shut down the week between Christmas and New Years, but I had a ton of PTO to kill, so I actually took an additional week off the week prior, making for I think 18 consecutive calendar days I was going to be out.  That’s a lot, but It was cool – my manager approved it, never was an issue at all.

Then, on the first day of my break, I get a text from my manager around 6pm (after the work day was over), asking me to call him right away.  Maybe it’s a product of being raised by a paranoid Italian mother, but right away you start thinking of all these horrible things that could be the reason for this unprompted, off-hours text at a time my boss knew I was out on vacation:  did we get hacked?  Did the company just announce a mass layoff??  Was the CEO assassinated???  What could it possibly be?

So obviously, I called him right away to find out what was happening.  You ready for what the big deal was?  He wanted to know if I could help expedite the launch of a project which the powers that be in the organization had kicked the can down the road for months.  Mind you, I’m out on vacation for the holidays, as were probably 70% of everyone else in the company.  So, Number one:  Most people wouldn’t even see the notification and would have no idea about this until they were back from the break in January anyway.  Number two:  Not my problem:  the people in charge of this program should have been WAY more proactive about getting this addressed months ago, like they were supposed to.  Number three:  This was a low-risk situation, very little at stake, and this situation was nowhere near worth calling me and bothering me on my approved vacation - I was polite and professional about it, but my answer basically translated to “Merry Christmas, we’ll worry about this when I’m back.”   

Maybe this seems like an extreme case, but it’s a great example of how remote work capabilities can be dangerous and pose a risk to the boundaries between work and regular life.  If we had to be physically present in the office in order to communicate, then this conversation never would have happened, my vacation would never have been disrupted, and I’d have one less story to share on this podcast.  

But not every case of bad work/life boundaries come from the boss, and remote work isn’t always to blame. In fact.   Sometimes, it comes from the nature of the industry you’re in.  For example, I’ve mentioned before that I’ve worked in supply chain logistics.  That’s a 24 hour operation, and sometimes machines break, trucks get stranded, people don’t show up for work, and all these catastrophes always seem to happen at the most inconvenient times.  But the customer doesn’t care:  they’re expecting product on the shelf when they go to the store to buy it, or next-day delivery when they click the “place order” button online.   In cases like this, it’s entirely possible that you may have to work off hours or on scheduled days off.  

But let’s take 24-hour emergencies off the table and look at another big cause of work-life imbalance:  organizational culture.  Corporations are NOTORIOUS for setting unrealistic targets for their employees to hit.  Think about it:  if you had what seemed like an insurmountable mountain to climb, are you really going to start taking PTO days all the time?  Are you going to rest easy on your nights and weekends knowing that idle hours are going by when stuff isn’t getting done?  Even if it’s not goals per se, you might feel pressure from your colleagues.  If everyone in your office is having a contest of “who can get here the earliest”, or “who can stay the latest”, that’s going to put pressure on you to follow suit.  If you’re the lone ranger heading for the elevator at the stroke of 5pm, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb.  That happened to a friend of mine one time:  he was living up in the Hudson Valley and commuting to the upper west side:  he had a solid 2 and a half hours each way, so even if he left the office at the stroke of 5 he STILL wasn’t getting home in time for dinner.  Naturally he would try to leave as early as he could, and his bosses started giving him crap for it.  Because that’s the most important thing right?  The work you accomplish means nothing unless you stay here until 5:43 every night to show face.  You know what that translates to?  A very antiquated, out-of-touch workplace culture.

But then there’s yet another reason for work-life imbalance.  Often times, it’s employees putting inordinate amounts of pressure on themselves to overachieve.  All the early mornings, late nights, work on holidays and weekends, however it manifests, lots of times it’s self-driven.  But where does that come from?  Why would someone have the impression that they need to bend over backwards like this in order to be successful?  If you ask me, it again comes down to what we all saw growing up.  All the movies, all the cartoons, all the sitcoms that portray people working in an office environment.  You guys remember Office Space?  “Yeah, hi, I’m gonna need you to come in on Sunday”.  In my honest opinion, a lot of what’s been portrayed in mainstream media the past few decades really perpetuates this notion that you have to be a complete slave to the company you work for, and that work comes first at all costs.  

But these days, there’s been a big awakening to the consequences that a misalignment between work and life can have.  I’ll save you from going and looking at the research by summing it all up in a few sentences:  long story short, people get burnt out, and exhausted employees with low morale usually tend to be pretty bad for business.  It really is that simple, and organizations today understand this WAY better than they used to.  You still have some bad actors out there, but most organizations (at least the ones that you’ve heard of) have become very aware and understanding of the fact that work should be only part of a person’s life:  not the sole focus of it.  So if you feel like you need to work yourself into the ground in order to keep up appearances or to avoid being singled out, I’d advise you to take that same energy and put it into finding another job, because you’re sitting on a ticking time bomb wherever you’re currently at.  (20:50)

These aren’t the only ways that your work-life boundaries can be violated:  the list of possibilities is infinite, and it’s way too much to cover in a single podcast episode.  But, as I say at the end of every episode, YOU are the boss in your career.  YOU decide how your day goes, what happens to you, and what you will/will not put up with.  If you’re listening to this episode, I’m going to assume that you care about keeping a healthy work-life dynamic in your life, so it’s very important to maintain boundaries to prevent things from getting out of hand.

So if you’re dealing with stuff like this, the solution I offer you is very simple.  Remember the example I shared where I was asked to do something while I was on vacation?  A lot of people are programmed to blindly listen to their boss and just to do whatever is asked.  Usually, this comes out of fear:  fear of getting in trouble, fear of being blacklisted, or fear of some kind of negative impact on their prospects of other opportunities.  What did I do?  I simply said no.  I was 100% in the right for turning that down:  I was on an approved vacation and, to be honest, nobody had any business contacting me that day.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have even answered the phone!  It may seem like a ballsy move, but if you want to protect yourself, and your sanity, those are the kinds of things you need to do. 

Now, let’s be clear.  You have to hold up your end of the bargain too.  We’re assuming here that you’re the kind of employee who does their job well, who’s a good team member, reliable, punctual, professional, and shows all the basic competencies that a good employee should have.  If you’re lazy, unmotivated, and just looking for an excuse NOT to do work, then you won’t get much sympathy from someone like me, and don’t expect a ton of respect or understanding from your organization either.  But if you’re a model citizen on the job, and you have a track record of being effective and getting things done efficiently, then the organization should respect you for it.  If you’ve got the credibility to back you up, then the company should know that you’re going to get the work done.  In that case, you’re the kind of person who doesn’t need more than 40 hours to get the job done, and there’s probably no need to be bothering you off the clock.   

As with any problem, prevention is the best resolution strategy.  You’ll want to build a good reputation for yourself from the outset, so that the company knows you’re the kind of person who gets things done and works effectively and efficiently.   Granted, in the beginning when you’re brand new and still getting ramped up, you may have to take one for the team, so to speak.  It’s all part of establishing credibility in the early going.  But once you’ve demonstrated your competence and your ability to add value, within a few short months you should be in a position where you’re able to set some boundaries.   If, at that point, you really sense that there’s going to be interference into your personal life, it’s important to enforce these boundaries.  If you don’t, your supervisor and those around you are going to think that you’re okay with these blurred lines, and they’re going to have less and less respect for your time.  

Going back to the supply chain example:  yes, if you’re in a volatile industry like this, then there may be extenuating circumstances where you have to roll up the sleeves, burn the midnight oil, or (insert whatever corporate cliché phrase you want) to get the job done.  But use your best judgement:  if you really believe that whatever situation would be an unnecessary violation of your personal time, you’re well within your rights to speak up.  And if your organization has any respect for you, they should understand.  If not, well then go back and listen to my resume writing episodes because you might need to get yourself out of there.

We’ve talked a lot today about the boundaries between work and personal life, so let’s sum it all up and send you on your way with today’s…..consigliere curtain call.  Mathematically, most people spend far more of their waking hours doing other things than they do working.  Remember the 69-31 ratio.  In that spirit, “work-life balance” doesn’t exist:  instead, you’ll want to focus on what should be very clear and rigid boundaries between your work and personal lives.  

Unfortunately, virtual work technologies, for as convenient and revolutionary as they are, can at times pose a threat to these boundaries.  But virtual work isn’t all that’s to blame:  boundary violations can come from many things, but some of the possibilities we discussed today were industry volatility, organizational culture, and pressure people put on themselves due to societal influences and mainstream media.

But, the prognosis is good.  Organizations of today are becoming increasingly more aware of why boundaries are important, and this trend should continue as more research is done and as more employers learn from trial and error.  So what can you do to maintain your own boundaries and prevent them from being violated at work?  It starts with prevention:  build up a good reputation for being reliable and getting things done:  in other words, send a message to everyone in your organization that you got this, and you’ll find a way to make whatever the task happen within reasonable hours.  I hope your boundaries never come under attack.  But if they do, and you really see it starting to become a problem, then stand your ground and be firm:  and if you’ve made yourself a proven commodity, the organization should respect you for it.  If not, then it may be time to start looking.

Sadly folks, that’s all the time we have for today.  But have no fears, and shed no tears, because I’ll be back with a new episode very soon.  As they say in the industry:  no listeners, no show, so do me a favor, and stay loyal!  If you find value in my content, please leave me a nice review, tell all your friends, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you use to get your podcasts.   Beyond the confines of your headphones, speakers, TV screen, or any other crazy contraption with the ability to stream audio, I also provide one-on-one career assistance, so visit my website at career-consigliere.net to learn more about me, book me for a private consult, join my email list, or explore some of the other career services I offer.  And to all of you out there in podcast land, remember this:  Who’s the boss in your career?  You, nobody else.