Got Boundaries?
If you’re a business owner, no boundaries are no good. At least if you want to be profitable and successful!
The thing about boundaries in business is that you get to choose yours, and you’ll also need to communicate and enforce them. Over and over again – especially if you’ve been a people-pleaser or otherwise haven’t been setting good boundaries.
Other people aren’t going to get it right away, and you’ll need to introduce them to every new prospect, client, and vendor. (Don’t worry, it’s not that much work! And the results are worth it.)
Maybe you feel overwhelmed with everything you have to do, or with requests from your clients (or family), or you’re starting to feel resentful, or like you’re on the path to burnout. Better boundaries can help with all those problems and help you improve productivity.
Why are boundaries necessary for productivity and preventing burnout?
As an entrepreneur, it is absolutely possible for you to spend every waking minute doing stuff. Answering emails, taking calls, promoting yourself on social media or live media, speaking at groups, helping your staff members with issues, doing something to your website, doing bookkeeping, marketing, attending networking events… the list goes on.
However, we all are beings with finite time on this planet. That means you don’t have time to do everything you COULD do in business, and that’s even if you wanted to dedicate every waking minute to work.
But you probably don’t, because you have loved ones you want and need to spend time with, and other fun activities outside work that you enjoy. That means the amount of time you have to work is limited, so you really need to focus on the important stuff to make sure that gets done.
Not to mention the fact that you’re a human with a human brain that REQUIRES rest to perform at the top levels. Olympic athletes sleep a lot, like 9 to 10 hours a night. Without that sleep, they don’t win medals.
Those of us who aren’t Olympic or even professional athletes may not need that much sleep, but we do need 7 to 8 hours. During that time the brain and body can take of important repair and maintenance work that can’t happen while we’re awake. (For more about the importance of sleep, read my article here.)
In addition to sleep, brains REQUIRE (that word again!) rest breaks throughout the day. Especially when you’re doing a lot of work that’s hard on the brain like preparing tax returns or court briefs, crunching numbers, and strategizing.
Rest is not optional if you want to be your best at work. Brains are not computers.
Having said that, rest for the brain doesn’t mean passively streaming TV shows. It can mean doing something creative, reading a book you enjoy, hanging out with friends and family, doing some physical movement, or something that’s active but not related to work.
For entrepreneurs, what this all adds up to is this: you need to set aside time for brain rest, fun non-work activities, and for being with loved ones. You need to be efficient and effective to get the work done that will power your business so that you have time for loved ones, fun hobbies, and enough rest.
That also means avoiding wasting time on things that don’t really need to be done at all, or on things that you can delegate to staff members or allow automation to handle for you.
Focusing on the priorities that will move your business forward.
And in order to do that, you need time and space for focus. And THAT requires (yes, requires) boundaries.
Boundaries on time to improve time management
Back in the last century, since we either didn’t have email at all or could only access email on our work computers, boundaries were already created for us. The evenings and weekends were reserved for fun activities and loved ones, because once we left for the night, work was done.
Sure, business owners (and others) would sometimes bring work home. But that was more of an anomaly. You didn’t get calls from clients in the evening, because at most they’d call the office and leave a voicemail that you wouldn’t get to until the next morning.
Now, of course, those automatic boundaries are erased. But that doesn’t mean that business owners should have no boundaries about when they’re “open for business” and when they’re not. You do get to choose yours, and hold them as well.
That could mean nontraditional business hours. Maybe you’re an early bird and want to be done with your day by 4. You can make sure no one schedules appointments past 2:30 or 3 on your calendar.
Or maybe you want to have time with the kids in the middle of the afternoon and have an early dinner with them. You can work that schedule into your calendar too.
Your own business hours also mean that you get to decide when you answer emails and calls, because no one should be dealing with those outside of work hours. The best productivity practice is to batch emails all at once, and you can choose whether you do it once a day, three times a day, or three times a week. Set up an email autoresponder that acknowledges receipt and lets people know when you check emails.
And then turn off your email notifications. You’ll get to them when you get to them, at the times you set aside for them.
Business owners need focus time to work ON their businesses (which also improves productivity in the workplace)
Now that you won’t be interrupted by emails coming in, you’ll be able to focus on the important work. But that means you’ll need to put time on your calendar to do this work. And you have to take these times seriously.
Treat these calendar times (at least 1-2 hours a day, preferably 4) as appointments with your best client, which in a way you are. That means you pick a time (preferably for productivity purposes the time of day in which your brain is best able to do this “thinky work”) and stick to it.
The appointment for focus work time doesn’t get to roam around your calendar to be crammed in anywhere you have a few spare minutes.
Just as you wouldn’t allow anyone to reschedule the appointment you have with your best client, don’t reschedule this focus time. Don’t allow staff members (or yourself) to book other meetings on top of it. Likewise, don’t allow staff members or customers or anyone else to interrupt this time. Close your door if you need to.
Some people like to have “office hours” where people can drop in with questions or concerns they have. That’s not the right time for focus work, but it can give you “open door” time to allow people to have access to you.
Having boundaries helps others know how to treat you
If you don’t set boundaries around your time and attention, no one is going to do it for you and you’re going to be overrun by other people’s demands and desires. Don’t let other people control your time — after all, setting our own ways of working is a key driver for many of us entrepreneurs!
Being open and accessible to your staff doesn’t mean that you have to be at their beck and call. You set the times when they can and can’t talk to you so you can get your work done – the things that only you as the business owner can do.
It’s the same for clients. Does bending over backwards and being available to your clients at all hours of the day and night mean good customer service?
Many of us were trained to think this way, but once you really consider it, you realize it’s not true.
When you don’t take the time to put your oxygen mask on by setting boundaries, you’re not going to be able to perform and provide the level of service that you want to give to your clients.
You’re going to get resentful and be well on your way to burnout city. Not to mention you’ll probably end up with high staff turnover because you’ll be so stressed no one wants to work for you.
Boundaries help you have healthy relationships with those in your orbit – staff, clients, prospects, vendors, and even family and friends. By treating yourself well, you get to treat others well too. (Schedule your emails if you’re working late at night to your staff!)
Recap (tl;dr)
Better business owners benefit from boundaries (I hate alliteration in case you were wondering, ha ha) that allow them time for focus work ON their businesses during work hours and time on evenings and weekends for the good life.
Tuesday May 14 is the FREE workshop on boundaries and managing conflicts! Register for the workshop here!