As soon as I shifted into a managerial role, I began to feel burned out. I stressed about the avalanche of emails in my inbox. Every time someone on my team stopped by for “just a minute,” I had to take a deep breath. No room for thinking or doing seemed to exist on my calendar, only meetings and conference calls. And when I got home at the end of the day, I either kept worrying about work or wanted to get into bed and go to sleep right away.
Not good. I had to set some new boundaries. I scheduled blocks of time every day to do my own tasks, strategic or tactical, and said no to certain meetings or calls that weren’t necessarily a priority. I tried to clear almost every Friday, too, to give myself a specific day to either play catch-up, be creative, or think critically about our team responsibilities and deliverables. Since I had an actual office, I shut my door when I was working on key projects so I wouldn’t be distracted or interrupted. I asked my direct reports to give me twenty-four to forty-eight hours to respond to requests unless they were urgent, but I committed to checking in with them every day in person at least once. I also tried to stop working through my lunch break at least a few times a week; instead I went to a yoga class or stepped outside for a walk or actually ate my food without multitasking. And in the course of a couple of weeks, I felt immensely better and more capable of handling anything that came my way.
To me, boundaries are the little sister of balance: approachable, realistic, friendly. Balance always sounds so elusive and perfect, but it’s really hard to obtain and even more difficult to maintain over time. Boundaries, however, are doable strategies to help you manage both work and home so you can function at your best. And when you’re experiencing burnout, you’ve likely failed to set or preserve the boundaries that allow you to protect your time and energy. This week pick one or two things that support your ability to work hard and smart.