Boundaries with Work and Technology

Setting boundaries is the first step to making work a smaller part of our lives. To increase margin in both our professional and personal lives, we must become much more intentional in our actions and decisions, which requires setting and enforcing clear boundaries that protect our time.

Boundaries are oriented toward preserving and allowing us to have healthy interactions with difficult people and circumstances. Boundaries are not walls where a complete disconnection is created, and they are not a mechanism that leaves us exposed and vulnerable. Boundaries are semi-permeable; some things flow in and out, and others are blocked. The design of our boundaries promotes self-protection, growth, and care. Weak boundaries make it harder for us to grow and mature. And without boundaries, we may end up deferring our actions, decisions, and time to others to choose those boundaries for us. Creating our own boundaries gives us the power to make our own choices and grow our lives in the direction and pace we decide. While it takes practice to create boundaries and find what feels good and healthy for us, it is freeing and empowering.

When boundaries are instilled, people will react in different ways. Other people with healthy boundaries often support and respect ours. Unfortunately, some people may get upset or make your boundaries about them and their needs. The latter makes it difficult to enforce your boundaries and do what we believe is best for you. With time, you’ll learn to surround yourself with people who respect your boundaries and distance yourself from those who are unwilling to accept them.

There are many places you can create boundaries in your life. The Developer Health OS will discuss these five:

1. Work
2. Attention
3. Interpersonal
4. Notifications
5. Social Media

1. Work Boundaries

Work hours are one of the least understood boundaries. Most of us expect at least a 40-hour work week, but we don’t typically give that much thought to or question it. Speaking in terms of salaried employees, when we work less than 40 hours, despite work completed, we’re asked why we fell short and feel we must make up for it. When we work over 40 hours, not only do we not work fewer hours the following week to balance out the overage, but the overtime is not often questioned either.

Every one of us has our own limits and ideal working conditions. The best-case scenario is that we work somewhere that acknowledges and respects that. A working parent with 20 years of experience and a recent college grad with no dependents is unlikely to thrive and do their best work under the same conditions with the same schedule. We must find the balance that works best for who we are and where we are in life instead of bending to a generic employee mold.

When we work toward well-defined goals, focus on the essential tasks to achieve those goals, and trust employees to communicate effectively and deliver. The specifics of the schedule are mostly inconsequential to anyone other than the worker.

However, there are limits to consistent human productivity. In his research, economics professor John Pencavel found that “productivity per hour decline[sic] sharply when a person works more than 50 hours a week. After 55 hours, productivity drops so much that putting in any more hours would be pointless. And, those who work up to 70 hours a week are only getting the same amount of work done as those who put in the 55 hours.”

Understanding why and how we currently work the way we do is the starting point for forming the boundaries we want to set in place for our work hours. Once we learn our limits, needs, and capabilities, we can draw lines. We can say, “In order to properly rest and spend time with family, I won’t respond to messages on the weekends or at night unless it’s an emergency, and x is what constitutes an emergency.” Or, “I’m most productive coding uninterrupted in the mornings, so I’m not scheduling meetings during the first two hours of my day unless (1) it’s imperative for me to be at this meeting, or (2) we cannot make another time work for attendees, but this should happen very rarely.” The semi-permeability of boundaries can be seen in the examples stated, where the general case of what is desired is clearly relayed, followed by a detailed description of what would warrant an exception.

We all have different jobs, roles, tasks, and expectations, but we all deserve to protect ourselves, our health, and our time. To practice aligning our lives with our priorities, we first need to take inventory of the hours in our day and ask ourselves the following questions:

• How many hours are we dedicating to work, family, exercise, and sleep?
• Do we have any margin built into our day for the unexpected?
• When looking at our entire days/weeks, are we surprised to see some portions larger or smaller than others?
• Do the largest portions align with our greatest priorities?
• If not, what are some ways to begin reallocating time to other areas?
• How can we work and live most intentionally so that we can spend time on what matters most to us?

Setting time boundaries is one of the most effective ways to rearrange and reclaim our time. Time is the ultimate boundary. We can’t change the amount of time we have in a day. Revisiting our time budget and strategies for doing less can help us adjust our hours to get the most out of life. Examining and investigating is the only way to know for sure what we need to do versus what we can rearrange. For example, ask yourself:

• Can we block the last hour of our day to tie up loose ends to ensure we don’t bring work into our personal time?
• Can we remove work Slack and email from our personal devices?
• Can we experiment for a week by cutting back and noting how it goes?
• Can we cut back even further the following week?

2. Attention

Setting boundaries around where we focus our attention can help ensure that we will be fully present with whatever slice of the pie we intend to spend time on. Attention boundaries aren’t only about how long we can work on something but when we work on it. We choose what we’re giving our attention to during the day, evening, restful times, and weekends.

As previously mentioned, the average time it takes to context-switch is 23 minutes. When we wrap up work for the day and move into our personal agenda, that transition takes time. If we allow a few work emails to come through and interrupt this time, we may spend our entire night with our attention still tethered to work. The same is true for weekends, vacations, and holidays. Always available means always at work. Despite our physical environment, our mind and attention is still devoted to the workplace. Research also shows that using computers, phones, and television 1-2 hours before bed can cause “increased depression and anxiety, poor sleep quality, decreased psychological and emotional well-being, an increased level of stress, and a higher likelihood of burning out.”

Setting boundaries around our attention can be extremely challenging, as this is not solely about separating work from play. We are prone to distracting ourselves, interrupting our work, and escaping the present moment to avoid engaging with something before us. Case in point: I have distracted myself several times while writing this section when I find I’m at a loss for words to describe the message we are trying to convey here.

Combining the tools for slowing down, leaving margin in the day, prioritizing the essentials, and investigating where we spend time during the day gives us the peace of mind that everything we need to get done will get done. We can focus better on our work during the day without stressing about grocery shopping and making dinner because we already know we’ve allocated time for those tasks. We can unwind at the end of the day with a few episodes of our favorite show without worrying about getting back to everyone’s emails because we already know we have an hour carved out of our day before lunch tomorrow to get back to everyone.

We can also curate our environments to reinforce attention boundaries by:

• Removing reminders of work (agendas, devices, documents, etc) from restful spaces to help us remain focused on resting
• Choosing a fiction novel over a business book for our vacation read to promote the escape from our everyday routine
• Setting our phones in grayscale assists in warding off the dopamine hijacking social media apps have expertly perfected
  • iOS instructions: Make sure you follow steps 1 & 2 so that you can easily turn grayscale on/off when you are taking photos or showing them to others on your phone
  • Android instructions

3. Interpersonal

Depending on our unique relationships and circumstances, we can implement a limitless breadth of interpersonal boundaries. For the purpose of this section, we’ll focus on two common interpersonal boundary topics: deadlines and social contracts.

Deadlines

The value of deadlines allows us to track work and plan around the expected completion of deliverables, which seems to be a relatively positive practice. However, there are few words that conjure instant fear, anxiety, and imposter syndrome, like the word deadline. While a deadline in and of itself is neutral, our expectations and communications around deadlines create a significant source of stress. A few reasons this may happen are when the requirements for a deadline are not clearly understood or when the work being requested isn’t up for negotiation.

Negotiating our deadlines and the work added to our plate is a form of boundary setting. Of course, we must complete tasks to drive toward goals. However, overloading our work capacity may not get us there quicker, and it risks burnout. Discussing deadlines with our managers communicates what we already have in progress so we can fairly assess this new deliverable among current priorities and provides clarity on requirements and scope. Instead of immediately agreeing to a new deadline, talking out these details with colleagues, bosses, direct reports, etc., gets everyone involved and on the same page to move forward less stressed and more productive.

Social Contracts

Without specifically using the term “social contract,” we’ve mentioned key tenants of these agreements throughout the OS. A social contract can be described simply as sharing with our colleagues how we prefer to work, meet, and communicate. The main goal of a social contract is to move from implied expectations based on inferences, interpretations, assumptions, and past experiences to explicit expectations that are clear, specific and formally agreed upon.

Social Contract Level	Example: How to Give You Feedback
Level 1: Explicit - Base on Conversation and/or instructions	You tell me when and how to give you feedback or we discuss how we intend to give each other feedback
Level 2: Implicit - Based on Inferences and Interpretations Note typically skews toward preferences of the most powerful person in the dynamic	I watch other people on my team give you feedback, and then inver how and when to give you feedback based on how I interpret what I see
Level 3: Implicit - Based on Assumptions and Past Experiences	I decide how and when to give you feedback based on what I experienced in my last job setting and that feedback culture

Expectations & Social Contracting

Social contracts outline our boundaries. They may include, but are not limited to, the best time to schedule meetings, how those meetings should be scheduled, what information is expected in requests, preferences for messaging, how and when a response should be expected, and what kind of notice is needed for deliverables - especially if they’re last minute.

Here are a few examples of social contracts:

• Probably not your typical welcome email
• Working with Claire
• Tom’s Leadership & Manager Handbook
• Aaron’s Social Contract

4. Notifications

Adjusting notification settings on our devices is one of the simplest boundaries to implement because our technology allows us to control when, where, and for what we are alerted. We decide which apps we download, where we see a message (home screen, banner, etc.), and if we’re available at all. Apps are going to constantly bombard us with notifications because their objective is to keep you on their platform. To break away from these distractions, we need to take inventory of what notifications we currently have enabled and if there’s anywhere we can begin to cut down.

Do we need work email and Slack on our phone? Why? Is it because we answer messages after hours or work on the go? If we work on the go, can we get a work device that we turn off after work? If we can’t get a work device, can we turn our work notifications off at night? Can we leave our phone outside our bedroom and use an alarm clock instead?

Nothing is permanent. Begin by experimenting with small adjustments and see how it goes. Does everything still get done? Were there any missed emergencies? What have we gained from implementing this boundary? What have we spent our time on when we’re not pulled into our devices?

Here are a few places to start:

• Setting our computers and phones to Do Not Disturb during deep work
• Turning off Slack notifications altogether and setting a time to check messages
• Deleting email and Slack from our phones

5. Social Media

There are varying options around how we can engage with social media, but all bring a level of distraction. Social media has obvious benefits, but at some point, the scale tips in the wrong direction, and the exposure can become detrimental. We have the opportunity to dedicate specific times and limits to how long we access these platforms and through which devices. To cut back, can you remove social media from your phone and only use the web app? Could you put your phone in grayscale?

Try experimenting with these options for a few days and see how you feel.

• Delete social media from your phone for a week and see how it affects you. Set time aside to use the web app instead. Consider leaving social media off your phone.
• Turn off all social media notifications via email and otherwise.