94 | Creating Boundaries | Shorts by BBC

Hello there. I wanted to talk a bit today about creating boundaries and about flexibility and about looking after ourselves. I think we all know, most of us from experience, that the pandemic has massively accelerated this whole idea of home or remote working or working from wherever you are. It's what people want going forward. They don't want to go back to a 5-day working week in the office. And from an organizational perspective, it's going to be saving them money as they're able to scale back the size of their buildings and the space they need for, for desks for people to be in the office. So there is real benefit. Of course, it's given us a real opportunity to have a more blended approach to our home and work lives, to bring our kids to school, to head out for a walk during the day, to pop to a physio appointment, to do the laundry, to go for a coffee or a doctor's appointment during our working day, and of course then make up the time or get the work done as and when we do. So that flexibility is there, which has been a fantastic thing for very many people. However, this was kind of brought to my attention last week in a conversation with a client when we were speaking about working hours and people not being able to switch off. So, you know, we're missing the downtime that commuting used to give us. Yes, people talking about, well, it was an hour in the car in traffic, but maybe that was an hour in the car in traffic to podcasts, or listening to the radio, or giving people a call, or simply if you were sitting in traffic jam sending texts to people. You know, it was time for us to chill, just to have time to ourselves, and that's gone. And of course, then put on top of that the fact that we haven't been, I don't think, particularly great at creating boundaries. And I'm as guilty of that as anybody else. We're all working more hours, because perhaps we're working that commute time that we used to be in the car, we now just start at our desk half an hour earlier or stay half an hour later. So, you know, with all those extra working hours, I just wonder if we're being quite as effective in either our home lives or indeed our work lives. So I thought today it might be worthwhile throwing in a few wee tips, literally little things that we could each do to make a difference, to try and make those boundaries a little less blurred. You know, for me, Maybe the first one is when you stop, stop. Decide a time in the evening that your workday ends and make sure you leave it there. No laptop, no phone, no email, no nothing. I'm now not present at work anymore. I'm now present at home. Not everybody has the luxury of having a cabin in their back garden. And not even everybody has the luxury of having an office space in their homes. And many of us have been working from kitchen tables. Packing away. I remember speaking to a friend who said every evening he packs away his stuff into a cupboard, and in the morning he unpacks it again. Does it take a few minutes? Yes. Is it a bit of hassle? Yes. But doesn't mean that he's not sitting there looking at his laptop and his work saying, just check me, just check me, while he's having his dinner or while he's walking past to put his kids to bed. Yes, it's out of the way. It's completely out of the way. So if you don't have that ability to close a door on your workday, at least get it out of your line of sight. I think a big one that many, many of us feel guilty about is making time for ourselves during the day. And really, that comes down to scheduling. Scheduling time in the diary for you. Some time to rest, to process, to recharge. Maybe that's about baking a loaf of bread, or walking the dog, or meeting a friend for coffee, or just sitting and listening to music. For half an hour. But blocking in that time, me time, personal time, whatever you want to call it, is really important. And what's more important is not to feel guilty about it. You know, you're gonna be a much better person and a more energized and productive colleague if you do. Thirdly, agreeing a schedule with your team that you all agree and you all commit to is really powerful. When we turn on in the morning, when we switch off at night, how long we'll do calls for, What time perhaps we don't schedule meetings into 10 to 12 in the mornings? When we'll have that personal time, maybe we should go with phone first rather than let's jump on a Zoom. What are some of those little things that you can do as a group of colleagues and that you can commit to in order that you all work more effectively together? And of course, yes, they're going to be guidelines. They're going to be best practice scenario. And of course, you're going to have to sometimes say, well, I need to take a meeting outside of this, or we need to schedule a meeting during the time that we said we wouldn't. But that should be less and less and less often, I would hope, because you've made that commitment to each other. And of course, the last thing then to layer on top of all that is if you're a boss, you need to lead by example because leaders, as a client of mine says to me often, leaders cast long shadows. I don't think, and I see it all the time now, that line on the bottom of emails that says, I'm just sending this email 'cause it suits me, but if it doesn't suit you, please don't respond. That's not enough. If you get an email from your boss or the CEO of your company or some other senior leader, you're probably going to respond because still that niggle in the back of the head, they might think I'm not working hard enough. They might not think I'm committed. Leaders need to take the lead here. Leaders need to be the ones that are thinking, well, I won't call anybody after 5 PM. 6:00. If it does suit me to send emails after 6:00, then I will make sure that I use the schedule send functionality, which is in all emails now. And when I said this to somebody that I was chatting to the other day, a senior leader in an organization, she said, "Oh, but it's just, oh, it's just, I'm not really very techie. It's just hassle to learn that." It's really important to learn that and to make sure that you're not sending emails to people outside of hours, because there's absolutely No need, no need at all. Now, the last thing to think about is that change doesn't just happen. You need to make change happen. You need to do things differently for yourself, for your colleagues, or for your team. So my question to you today in this Building Better Culture short is, what will you do? What will you commit to doing differently? What will you commit to doing differently today, right now? What's the one thing? Write it down and crack on and do it. Because, you know, as they say, every journey starts with the first step. Thanks a lot for listening. See you next time.