Detached, distracted and disillusioned.
There have been times in my life when my career was happening to me.
It seemed that the control over the direction, intensity and pace of teaching and leadership was out of my grasp. This lack of control and agency coincided with times when I suffered the most with poor mental health, and I was detached, distracted and disillusioned.
The change in my career — I became an education consultant and now run my own business — pushed me to develop boundaries around my work time.
These self-authored boundaries were (are) even more critical because I could work from anywhere, and it was easy to take the laptop into the kitchen and answer the email from the school excited to start a partnership.
Work did not have the same physical pattern as teaching, and it took on a different type of rhythm and cadence, unbound from a timetable.
Work did not have physical premises, and to this day, I have always worked from home. The lines and thresholds intertwined.
Looking back on my teaching life, I can see that the distinction of boundaries was just as blurry. I took work home, and there was always something more to do, weekends engulfed in planning and other spreadsheet related leadership responsibilities.
Do What You Love Until It Kills You
There is that phrase that you are lucky if you can do what you love because it doesn’t feel like work. The downside people don’t speak about is how boundless this can become.
A never-ending vista of possibility that excites terrifies and induces tension, in a heady mix of simultaneous endeavour.
We are victims of Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
To counter this, establish clear boundaries that give you cues to align with.
- What is essential?
- What are my priorities?
- When am I overstepping the mark?
Here are some strategies that resonate with me you might have a go at adopting.
Strategies To Help You Regain Control Of Your Boundaries
Say No
This strategy has been a work in progress for me for a decade, but I improve all the time. The key is to understand the most fulfilling work to make a better decision when opportunities arise.
It is much harder to say ‘ no’ if you are unclear about your Northstar, how you have the most significant impact, or what you truly care about.
“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage — pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically — to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.”
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Shut The Door
One of the first pieces of advice about working from home after leaving the classroom was from serial educational entrepreneur Ben Barton.
“Find a place that allows you to shut the door on your work.”
We have all noticed the physical location as work has come home during these troubled times.
By creating a physical boundary at home, I could walk away, take a break, move to another place for a different activity and ultimately close the door on ‘work’ at the end of the day.
“No is a complete sentence.” — Anne Lamont
Control Your Calendar
I block out periods in my calendar for writing, research and sometimes for reflection after workshops or intense periods of client work. For this weekly email, I often block the time.
A difficult tactic for teachers and educational leaders to apply because there is so little scope for change in work patterns.
Once again, though, we can abstract a deeper insight about purposeful time and intentional work to help and instruct us. Try on some of these questions for size:
- Which time of the day or week are you most open to new ideas and insights?
- How do your disposition and mental energy change throughout the day?
- For every face to face meeting, do you have an equivalent amount of time for reflection and to process the experience?
- When do you get to create?
- Look at the time you spend at home or work and consider the categories of activity. What proportion is operational, relational, creative, research, exploratory, learning, teaching, preparation etc.?
A critical insight I have learned is that we need to be intentional and proactive in organising our time.
Wrestle back control of your calendar.
Share Clear Expectations
You see this all the time with the email Out of Office reply — I will be slow to respond until I return if it is urgent.
The opportunity is to use the auto-reply email strategy when we are in the office to help set clear boundaries for focus and communication.
There is, of course, this strange assumption with email communication about the response time and what is deemed polite and acceptable. Our appetite for instant messaging does skew this expectation considerably.
One of the best examples I have seen with email expectations was in the signature line. It stated the times of day when the responder checks their inbox.
I only check my emails at 930am and 330pm
Whether it is in meetings, emails or how you speak with colleagues, setting clear expectations about what is appropriate for you is proactive — you control the pace and timing of your activity, not someone else.
Your Talking Points
- What opportunities do you care about the most?
- Reframe your situation to understand what you can control.
- You cannot hold people to expectations that are not shared.
- What are you saying no to, so you can say yes to what motivates you?