Boundaries Are a Woman Business Owner’s Best Friend
The Barbie movie grossed $636 million in the United States and over $1.4 billion worldwide. I bet America Ferrara's monologue about the absolutely impossible standards women are held to in this country had a lot to do with it breaking the box office. So many of us felt seen by that scene!
Ever heard the saying, “If you want something done give it to a busy woman?” There’s absolutely truth to that, but here’s the thing: that is NOT a compliment or a good thing.
Loading women down with work like so many pack horses gets the work done, often more cheaply because women are paid less. While women are doing the thankless grunt work, men are freed up for interesting and thought-provoking work, which affords them more career opportunities.
Ever since the pandemic, we’ve been hearing more about burnout. According to different surveys, women report more burnout than men. It’s at least partially because women typically take on more cognitive load.
Even in hetero households where the cleaning, washing, and cooking duties are more evenly divided, it’s women who know who the pediatrician is. Moms tend to keep track of which days little Shayla has beekeeping lessons and Jayden has soccer practice and so on.
Misogynist structures in society drive a lot of gender inequality. While we can’t fix everything ourselves, we can, for example, vote for the people (who to be fair, aren’t all other women) who believe women have final say over their own bodily autonomy.
But sometimes we ourselves allow this imbalance to happen by tending to everyone else and ignoring our own needs. In honor of Women’s Day on March 8, let’s delegate more at home and at work.
Creating boundaries for yourself about what’s acceptable and what’s not will help you be more productive and be less foggy and distracted. Yes, even if you’re in the fun periods of perimenopause (hi!) and/or menopause.
You’ll have more attention to pay to the important things. You can stop allowing tech companies and others to use your attention against you to sell ads. Reclaim your time and your focus and refuse to allow others to dictate your priorities.
Women entrepreneurs need to nurture themselves to improve productivity
In our society, women are commonly thought of as nurturers. We all are to some degree, but too many of us have been conditioned to ignore or deprioritize our needs.
Selflessness is a trap.
I’m not saying you should never consider other people and their feelings. (That’s just straight-up narcissism.) Yes, it’s good to help people when you can. Yes, it’s good to be kind and recognize that other people sometimes need things from us. Yes, cooperation is how we humans survived as a species.
But that doesn’t mean always putting yourself last. Being kind is not the same thing as being a doormat for other people to wipe their feet on to get what they want. Giving to others doesn’t mean you drain yourself of every drop and exhaust your own energy.
Put your own oxygen mask on first. I used to tell my financial planning clients this all the time.
If you don’t have oxygen, you’re useless to others. Putting your own mask on first gives you the ability to help others. Another analogy is filling up your own cup first, because you can’t pour out of an empty one.
If you’ve been putting yourself last consistently, understand that you will get pushback at first. People get mad when their pack horse refuses to carry their stuff. And you’ll probably spend a lot of time communicating and recommunicating your boundaries for a while.
But don’t worry, they’ll get over it. Other people are capable human beings, even if they’ve been weaponizing their incompetence against you to get you to do their stuff for them. Just recognize there’s going to be an adjustment period, and probably some whining.
And you know what? That’s not your problem. You are now free to do the kind of work that only you can do - and that’s what will make you money.
Setting boundaries to improve productivity in the workplace
Most business owners, whether male or female, built their own businesses to help solve problems people are having or to be helpful in some way. Unfortunately, many people (especially women) confuse “helpful” with “always available”.
Those two things are not synonymous.
Are you always able to help right away? Or are you solving problems that are more complex, that require more information and more thought before executing?
People in knowledge-intensive businesses like law, accounting, and wealth management are usually solving more complex problems. So even if you want to help right away, you can’t. You need time to get the data and time to create a plan for how you’ll tackle it.
In other words, you can’t solve the problem the second you get on the phone or when you see the email. So why set the expectation that you’re going to answer the phone or send the email right away in the first place?
If you have a team, chances are they need guidance from you on a regular basis. They’ll have questions about their work that maybe only you can answer. (If someone else can answer them, then delegate to them first.)
Being available to your team doesn't mean you have to be ready to answer their questions whenever they feel like asking you. Or at any time of day that’s convenient for them. You know that sometimes if you give them enough time they'll figure it out anyway.
But there will be times when you really do need to sit down with them and take time. Again, that doesn’t mean you have to do that at their whims or convenience. You're the boss, so set ground rules for when you talk to them.
Maybe you have “office hours” where they can drop in and ask questions. Or maybe you close your door and make sure your calendar and your phone are set to Do Not Disturb so you can focus on your own work. The stuff that only you can do that can’t be delegated out and is critical to the growth of your business.
Or you could do both: have DND time (preferably each day, but at the very least once a week) where you are not to be disturbed, in addition to office hours where you will drop any work you’re doing when they come in. But don’t let every hour be an office hour.
Make these times regular every week and block off your calendar appropriately. Don't allow anyone (including yourself) to schedule appointments during your closed-door focus time.
For example, maybe you’re a bear sleep chronotype and so your best time for work requiring focus and concentration is late morning, 9 am to about 1 pm. Block that off as Do Not Disturb on your calendar. You might designate an hour or two after lunch for office hours, during which time people can schedule a half hour with you to go over their questions.
It’s OK if your staff has to get along without you for a little while. You may not remember this, but those of us Gen X and older can distinctly remember that when our boss went into a meeting, we didn’t have any way to contact them during that time. They were completely off limits (unless the building was burning down or something.) And somehow businesses got along just fine and were profitable.
Just because your staff can email you outside work hours doesn’t mean they should - and vice versa. As the business owner, you are in control of expressing and creating these lines for the staff to color in.
Setting those kinds of boundaries and communicating them is critical for you to be profitable while still having a life. You need to be able to do your work, the important work that only you can do that is necessary for the growth of your business, uninterrupted so you can focus and accomplish what you need to accomplish.
It’s best to set these ground rules ahead of time, so when you’re ready to hire your first staff member you’re clear about when they can reach you and when they need to work independently. Obviously, at the beginning there’s a learning curve and you’ll need to be more available than not. But as they are able to do more and more, you can focus more on your priorities.
If you’ve already got staff and boundaries are new, know that you’re going to get pushback. It’s OK for them to have questions, but not OK for you to give up because someone questioned why they can’t just interrupt you any old time they feel like it.
Keep holding the line, and respect their lines as well. They themselves may need some closed-door time to focus on the priorities you’ve given them. If so, that time needs to be respected.
What increased productivity can provide for women business owners
To be very clear, I’m not proposing that you block off time for focus work and for office hours as part of a 12-14 hour day every day. As business owners, there are long hours sometimes. But 12-14 hour days shouldn’t be the norm.
Instead, work a reasonable day and use the remainder of your time for favorite hobbies and time with family and friends.
When you’re productive and able to focus on one task at a time, you’re able to accomplish tasks. You can legitimately cross them off your to-do list. Otherwise, you may end up making up little tasks that you cross off because you haven’t been able to focus on the big ones.
Productivity enables you to make money in your business without spending all day at work. You’ll have time for all the fun and necessary relationships in your life outside work. Giving your brain time to rest and recharge outside work will make you more effective at work.
There have been a number of studies and research about what people at the end of their lives want and/or wish that had happened earlier in their lives. None of them wish they’d worked more. Almost all of them wish they’d spent more time with dear ones and doing things they enjoyed.
That’s what true productivity is about: accomplishing the critical and important things in your business that move it forward so you can make money – but without sacrificing everything else in your life to get it. It’s possible - but you do have to think differently about what you need to make it happen and how to help your team and others help you get where you want to go.
Recap (tl;dr)
Women, including women entrepreneurs, have a heavy cognitive load. It’s time to delegate what can be outsourced so you can concentrate on what’s necessary to move your business forward. Productivity doesn't mean cramming more work into every minute, but instead focusing on the essentials so you can enjoy your life outside work too.
If you’re having difficulty with priorities and managing your time well, schedule a free consultation with me here to see how I can help. I may not respond right away – but I can promise when I do, I am focused only on you and not my other clients.