Five Sensible Workplace Boundaries to Protect Your Personal Time
Time is the most valuable commodity in the world - once it’s been spent, you can never get it back. I am not a workaholic. I have an active life outside of work, and I actively protect it; these are the five boundaries I set right away at any job.
5. “I’m not interested in management.”
You should see the looks on people’s faces when I say this. I’m what you’d call hyper-efficient. I can do in forty hours what companies usually need two or three people to do. I know this because I have trained my replacements and they always get two or three people for what I did by myself. The worst was a job where I served as the lead application systems analyst, the data analyst, a helpdesk support tech, an assistant network engineer, and a sql report writer all at the same time for 16 months. At the decent companies I’ve worked for, upper management sees this and salivates. I’m not only experienced in multiple areas of IT, I am good with people and good at coaching them up They’re thinking “management material.”
I’m looking at the 24/7 phone calls, the 12 hour day meeting schedule, the divorces, and the number of guys around me collapsing from overwork and stress being sent to the hospital. Sure, the money would be nice, but you can’t enjoy it if half is earmarked to go to your soon-to-be ex spouse, you’re exhausted, or in a worst case scenario, dead. I don’t want any part of what comes with that kind of title. Been there, done that. No, thanks.
4. “I’m not interested in leading projects or being involved in project management.”
See #5. But less pay, more pressure. No, thanks.
3. “I don’t look at email when I’m not in the office.”
When I leave work, I leave work. Unless it’s a 24/7 on-call position – in which case, I would not have taken the job – there is nothing you can send me that is so important it can’t wait until tomorrow that I would have any power to fix (”The network is down!” I am not a network guy. “The database is down!” I am not a DBA). I’m not going to babysit my phone in case some workaholic wants something or has a question at 11pm. If the system isn’t spontaneously combusting and the company isn’t losing money over it, whatever it is can wait until tomorrow or whenever I’m back in the office.
2. “Remove my personal cell phone number from the Outlook directory.”
My phone is my phone. If you’re not paying for it, you don’t get to use it. It’s okay for my supervisor or my team to have it (and not abuse it.) But I don’t need someone from Wyoming who can’t figure out how to log into Windows calling me at 2pm on a Saturday to talk them through it. Especially when I’m Level III and there’s a Level I 24/7 call center and a Level II they didn’t bother to call first. Just…no. You can give me a work cell phone, but off work is still off work and I won’t be carrying it with me everywhere I go. It’ll be in my work bag at the house until it’s time to go to work again. If it’s an emergency, that’s different, and I’m sure an appropriate level person who has my personal number will find a way to let me know.
And if some enterprising business person takes my personal cell number out of the company directory and uses it? I have it removed and tell their supervisor and my own that it is not to be used for business calls and I will neither answer nor return those calls.
1. “I am not recording this as a PTO day if I have to spend half the day working.”
PTO means Paid Time Off. Off. As in, not working. If I am answering email and phone calls, I am working. If I have to join in a conference call on my day off because you just need to have my input on something, I am working. That is not PTO, and we are going to treat it as a work day.