Setting Boundaries for Your Time: You are a Person, Not a Machine
To organize your time toward a well-lived life, you must start with a radical notion in our culture. You must start with the idea that you are a person: not a machine, not a widget or a gadget, you are not even a personal brand. You are a person. But we live in a culture that does not treat people as persons.
We live in a culture that glorifies extreme overwork; perfectionism in the way our bodies look and the way our homes look; and 24/7 online connectedness. But you are a human person. These expectations are utterly unsustainable for actual human persons. These expectations are literally inhumane.
I wrote about the importance of defining how much is enough, when it comes to your things. Here we’ll look at making decisions about what is enough, when it comes to your time and your tasks.
This can be especially challenging for knowledge workers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers. The more autonomous or conceptual your work is, the more you need to set boundaries around it. Otherwise your work may overrun your life like kudzu in Tennessee.
How do we set boundaries around our work time?
Below I write about some general principles, and then outline two essential strategies.
Organizing Your Time Like You are a Person ( Not a Machine)
Being a person and not a machine has a few implications when it comes to our schedules…
First, as a person, you have many important things to attend to besides work. Machines are built to do nothing but work. Living persons are far more complex and interesting. Because you are a person, you need time to work, and time to take care of your needs at home. Time to rest and sleep well. Time to reflect, connecting with yourself, and with the natural world. Time to connect with others, offline, IRL. Time to move your muscles. Time to eat. Time to restore yourself by doing something just because you want to, just because you love it. Some days and weeks will be taken up with crises, or breaks from the usual routine like travel, or the need to meet a deadline. Some seasons of life, especially if you have young children or are a caregiver, will make this more challenging; but your needs as a person do not just go away. For most days, for a well-lived life, you need to be able to live like a whole person.
So we need to organize our time to accommodate much more than work.
The second thing is that when we look at work, we evaluate how much is enough by what you, as an individual person, can reasonably get done in a day, while meeting the other important needs that living persons have. This can be difficult if we buy into the notion that productivity means doing as much as possible, cramming in as much as possible. This is not about how much you or others think you should get done, which is limited only by our collective imaginations; but rather, being deeply reality-based in understanding how much you, in your current life situation, reasonably can get done.
The third thing is that if we are lucky enough to live long lives, our work hours will likely slow down or stop. And yet we may still have several years or even decades of life to live after our careers are over. So it is important over the seasons of your life to pay attention to what will be around, when your career is not. What will be around when your working life is in the rear view mirror? Hopefully you’ll still have relationships with family and friends and communities, projects you want to do, and interests you want to follow, because we are all still persons whether or not we have a job or career. It is wise to invest time in the other parts of your life that have nothing to do with work. People who put all their attention on their careers do not do well mentally or emotionally when they are no longer able to work. Sure, work is important, but keep in mind that the graveyards are full of indispensable people. (This is as reality-based as it gets.)
Take the long view here.
Fixin’ to Fix Your Hours
I lived in Texas. Non-Texans get ready to do things. Texans are fixin’ to do things. We are fixing to look at how people manage their time so they have many hours to do things besides work.
Cal Newport writes and talks about what he calls fixed-schedule productivity, but religious communities for centuries have stopped work several times a day to pray together. Fixed-hour prayer, praying five times a day, is also one of the pillars of Islam, and used to be a common practice for Jews and Christians as well; not just clergy, but people in general observing set times to put an intentional pause in their days.
We can see how this works most clearly in monastic communities. Generally these communities are expected to be self-supporting, so they run businesses and also work in those businesses (traditionally, commercial bakeries and breweries, but I’ve also heard about a monastery that refurbished laser cartridges). And of course, they are also working to meet daily needs - meals, cleaning, maintenance of buildings and grounds.
So how do they find all those hours to pray together?
And I do mean hours: Below I copied the daily schedule for prayer from the website of a monastery. (Prayer times are named in Latin because these communities have been observing this schedule for 1,500 years.)
3:30 am – Vigils
7:00 am – Lauds, followed by ~7:25 am Mass
10:00 am – Terce (private, in workplaces)
12:20 pm – Sext
2:00 pm – None
5:30 pm – Vespers
7:30 pm – Compline
The answer to how these communities find all those hours to pray, is that they don’t find those hours. Prayer time is not leftover time, scrips and scraps of minutes in between texts and emails. Those hours are fixed in the community’s schedule. Time spent working, eating, and resting is all scheduled around that.
Intentional communities have been using fixed-hour time management strategies for centuries.
We can use fixed hours as well.
First Simple* Strategy for the Rest of Us: Set a Quitting Time
What Cal Newport called “fixed-schedule productivity,” I call “setting a quitting time.” Actually, since I did live in Texas, I prefer to call this strategy “Quittin’ Time.” You don’t have to say that with a drawl, but it’s more fun if you do.
I have a quittin’ time! Just like I did when I worked shifts in retail, and shifts at a warehouse!
I turn off my laptop at 5:30 each day, at the latest. When my laptop is off, my work for the day is done.
If you commit to this, if you get serious about ending work at a certain time each day, you may discover that it is challenging at first. However, if you stay committed to your quitting time, this is a fantastic way to spur your creativity in finding ways to work more effectively. When I started my daily quitting time, this served as a forcing function because I had to stop distracting myself online. I had to define what was, and was not, part of my work, and to start saying things like “Let me think about that and get back to you,” or even “no,” which, as someone who previously reflexively and unthinkingly said “yes,” is a learned skill for me. (And if I can learn to say no sometimes, so can you.)
Reshape your work time by setting a quitting time.
Second Simple* Strategy: Use a Closed List for the Day
If you believe that you are only done with your work, when your work is done — and you have not defined how much work is enough for a day — you will never feel like you are done. You will feel like you are always working.
Your imagination can come up with far more projects and tasks than you can carry out in real life. Other people’s imaginations can come up with projects and tasks for you, too, reasonable or not. It is not realistic to think we can get everything we think of, done. We can think of MUCH more we could do than we can actually accomplish!
So once again we need to confront reality. Ideas are infinite. Our hours, however, are not. A short, closed list of things you know you can get done during a day is far more motivating than attempting to complete whatever arises from your mind or your inboxes.
Mark Forster’s book Do It Tomorrow gives a thorough discussion of closed versus open lists (Forster 2008, pp 99-107), but big picture here, it’s like the difference between a checklist or your grocery list; and say, a list of books you want to read. You want your list for the day to act more like a checklist. At a certain point, you stop adding more.
Here is an example of a closed list: I have a packing list for a bag I use when I attend conferences: phone, wallet, ID and hotel cards, notebook, laptop, chargers, snacks, contact information, water bottle. When I go to a conference and use this list, I might realize I forgot to add something to the list. (The whole list is made up of the things I have previously forgotten, by the way. That’s how I created it.)
Let’s say I need something from my car during a break but my car key is in the hotel room, waaaay over the state line on the other end. (Maybe even in Texas!) And then the parking garage is in the opposite direction. So I live without whatever the item is in my car, or miss the meeting to get it; and then I might write a note on my list to add my car key (or the thing I needed! Or both!) for the next time I pack my conference bag.
But here’s a reality-based thing about my conference bag: unlike Mary Poppins’ bag, my messenger bag’s space is limited. There is only so much I can cram in there. I can think of lots and lots of things that would be nice to have with me during a conference; but I only want to use one bag. Finally, I don’t want my one bag to be so heavy or so jammed full of things that it stresses me out.
Here’s the other reality-based thing about my conference bag: once I’m at the conference, the bag is already packed. So anything I add to the list will have to wait until later.
Use a list for your day like a list for your day bag. Once you’re out the door, whatever is in your bag is in your bag. Anything that gets added to the list won’t be included until next time.
Use the same principle for managing your day. Write down your list before you start your day. Once you’ve made your list, anything new must wait for the next day, or later, unless it is a true emergency.
We feel like we have no time when we keep stuffing things into our days. Give yourself a buffer, some margin, between the time you think of something to do (or someone else thinks of something they want you to do), and the time you plan to deal with it.
Limiting your list will also help you prioritize.
Mark McGuinness won’t put anything more on a daily list than he can fit on a Post-it note (McGuinness, location 989-996)
The solution turned out to be counterintuitive: I got more done by making my to-do list shorter. Now, one of my most valuable productivity tools is a stack of Post-it notes. Not the smallest size, but the 3″ x 3″ squares. The top Post-it contains my to-do list for today and today only. Because my day is a limited size, I figure it makes sense to limit the size of my to-do list. If I can’t fit the day’s tasks on the Post-it, I’m not likely to fit them into the day.
And once I’ve finished the to-do list, I’ve finished work for the day. As a self-employed creative workaholic, after years of feeling there was always something else to do at the end of the day, I can assure you this is a magical feeling. But what about all the rest? All the phone calls, emails, and requests that come in during the day? Not to mention all the new ideas that pop into my head as I work? Good question. There’s a place for all of these things, and that place is the second Post-it on the stack, a.k.a. my to-do list for tomorrow. Unless something is seriously urgent AND important (such as an emergency request from a client), then I never add anything to today’s list once I’ve finalized it first thing in the morning.
You can limit the amount of space for your list like McGuinness does, or you can limit the number of things you’ll add.
Limiting the number is how the MIT (Most Important Task) method works, and also how Jake Knapp’s burner list works.
The key is using a closed list, however that works for you. Don’t do today what you can address tomorrow.
Commit to a quitting time, and use a closed list each day.
Live like a person, not a machine.
References
Long working hours increasing deaths from heart disease and stroke: WHO, ILO (no date). Available at: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2021-long-working-hours-increasing-deaths-from-heart-disease-and-stroke-who-ilo (Accessed: 28 May 2021).
‘The Graveyards Are Full of Indispensable Men – Quote Investigator’ (no date). Available at: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/21/graveyards-full/ (Accessed: 28 May 2021).
Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours - Study Hacks - Cal Newport (no date). Available at: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/15/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/ (Accessed: 28 May 2021).
The Divine Commission (2012) Holy Cross Abbey. Available at: https://www.virginiatrappists.org/pray-with-us/ (Accessed: 28 May 2021).
McGuinness, M. (2016) Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an ‘Always on’ World. Lateral Action.
Cinema Cut (no date) Mary Poppins (1964) Magic bag. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AivZSC9J3Rs (Accessed: 28 May 2021).
Amazon.Com: Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an “Always on” World EBook: McGuinness, Mark: Kindle Store. https://www.amazon.com/Productivity-Creative-People-Always-World-ebook/dp/B01LXUKMQ2. (Accessed 5 Aug. 2020).
Knapp, J. (2021) The “Burner List”—My simple, paper-based system for focused to-dos, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/make-time/the-burner-list-my-simple-paper-based-system-for-focused-to-dos-95497321cf14 (Accessed: 28 May 2021).
breathe (2007) Purpose Your Day: Most Important Task (MIT), zen habits. Available at: https://zenhabits.net/purpose-your-day-most-important-task/ (Accessed: 28 May 2021).
Notes
*Simple does not mean easy. Setting a quitting time and using a closed list means you may have to experiment a lot, dealing with your own distractions and expectations, and managing expectations with others. Yes… you will have to do some “me-search,” and you will have to practice setting boundaries. But the payoff is that you actually do get your work done for the day — which feels GREAT by the way!! — and then you can really savor your time off. Because now you really will have real, restorative, official time off.