Today’s technology has made it possible for most of us to be accessible all of the time. It allows us to do business from home, from the beach, from our vehicles . . . from anywhere. This can allow you to get out of the office more, but the flip side is that it allows you to take the office with you wherever you go, and that may not be a good thing.
They say workers today have a higher level of stress than at any other time in history, including the plague-stricken middle-ages and the poverty-stricken Great Depression. If this is true, then constant communication is even more stressful than poverty and disease! We need to find ways to do our work efficiently without feeling like we never have privacy, without feeling like we have to say goodbye to the work/home boundary once and for all. Cell phones ensure that even when shopping at the grocery store, we aren’t permitted peace and quiet. Work could intrude at any time. Email ensures that even when we tell a secretary or phone service to “hold all calls,” people can still get through to us at any time of the day or night.
The immediacy of these forms of communication has spoiled professionals and made us all expect instant gratification in our communications with others. If a colleague is called away from his desk and unable to answer emails or if he has turned off his cell phone, many associates simply feel at their wit’s end. Waiting for communications to be returned (something that used to be a normal part of life) now seems like a grossly unfair imposition. Most of us find ourselves on both sides of the communication question. We want reliable access to other business associates, yet we miss our own private time. We no longer know what it is like to be inaccessible to anyone save our families and loved ones for a weekend, a week off, or even an evening!
There is, however, a solution to all of this excess communication. It’s a little thing called boundaries. Yes, boundaries are passé, yes they’re out of style. But learning how to maintain communication-oriented boundaries is the only thing that will save you from the stress of modern living. Setting up boundaries is relatively easy, but maintaining them can be difficult. What’s difficult is the mind-games people will play to try to overcome your boundaries, the lengths they’ll go to to deny you your privacy. You have to be strong in the face of strong opposition to your boundaries, but once you do manage to enforce them, others will learn to respect them too.
The first thing you must do is decide what your communication boundaries will be. For instance, I do my primary work of the day every morning between 8:00 and 1:00. After that, I answer emails and phone calls. You may have a different work schedule, so decide what block of hours you want to have utterly free of communications in order to work. Next, decide what block of hours you want to have utterly free of communications in order to relax. I know one man, a film producer, who can’t afford to take any part of his work day off away from communication devices, so he sets his hours at 9 am to 9 pm. That is easy to remember and ensures that after 9 pm he will never never NEVER answer the phone. Sure, it doesn’t sound like much time to relax, but for a film producer to refuse to take calls in the middle of the night these days is practically revolutionary.
Whatever hours you choose to hold, determine what they will be and announce them. Be sure to include as part of your signature on all your emails what your hours are. Note your hours on your website as well. Be sure to freely communicate your hours with others. With modern messaging services, people can leave you messages of course while you are away from the phone, but when they know what your hours are, they will then know not to expect a call back until 1:00, in my case, or whenever you set your availability.
Clients and coworkers won’t balk at your designation of certain hours exclusively for work when they know that you take that time to concentrate without interruptions. Everyone likes to know that someone is concentrating on his/her work in order to do it right, so they will see it as a sign of true professionalism and wait patiently for that return call.
