Random thoughts: protect your time and energy in your work and personal relationships

Random thought time!

My camera is squeaking on the dashboard

Right now I am thinking about boundaries with people, and this is twofold.

One is workplace (colleagues & clients) and how you can…

Well, I work from home so it’s not that big of a deal

But if you are in person, we were talking about this in an academic group, Prolific, the other day, how can you stop people from eating up your time by jumping into your DMs (or emails) or stepping into your office if the door is open and chatting for 30 minutes or 3 hours, or whatever it is…

Part of that solution is working from home.

Part of it is keeping your door closed.

Part of it is saying, oh, I have have 5 minutes, I have to make a copy, would you walk with me?

Or, I don’t have the time to dedicate my full time and attention to you right now, why don’t we schedule something for later this week?

There are ways that you can train people, your colleagues or clients, and how they correspond with you. One thing that I do, is I don’t have my ringer on my phone.  No notifications on my phone whatsoever.  I do check my phone throughout the day if I need to, but the people that are important to me, I have trained them to contact me in other ways.  Email, preferably.  I have that on my voice message. So no matter what, a phone call goes straight to voice message (unless it is my son, and that will ring through).

You can set up life rules for how you want to interact with people, how you want to protect your time and energy, so that you can get stuff done. What I think a lot of people don’t know, is hey, you don’t have to drop everything and respond immediately.  Especially if you are working with somebody else or if you are in the middle of a project.  It is okay to delay your response. I think there is so much instant gratification nowadays and people are so used to getting what they want right away, and if you don’t respond right away they are like… you know…

I think that we should normalize making people wait or scheduling meetings in advance.

For me, on a personal level, I am an introvert of introverts.  I am very very protective of my time and energy.   For a very long time I would drop things for people, because that is how I was raised.  I was raised to put everybody else first, put every one else’s needs before myself. That has not served me well.  It has taken me a long time to unlearn that unhealthy thing.  It did me no good. It was harmful to me.

I mentioned I don’t have notifications on.  I occasionally drive a friend to the doctor, and that’s scheduled out weeks in advance.  If that friend wants a ride the same day, I’m not going to do it because that will disrupt my entire day.  I have to take an entire day off of work to do it.  So, it’s important to me to have things scheduled out in advance, that way I can plan out my week accordingly for the time that is going to be spent and the energy that is going to be spent.  I am drained from spending time with people.

The same thing with video chats. I love connecting with people in zoom, and lately somebody has been trying to video chat me on social media, which I enjoy the conversations but, it totally disrupts my entire day. And then I don’t get any work done.  And then I am just drained.

So I am not going to respond right away.  And if I see that person trying to video call me I will take my time and when I can I will send the link to my scheduler and be like, hey if you want to be in a video call with me, schedule a time. You know?

I usually text people back or email people back in the same day, usually within an hour or two. So that is not an issue.

The other thing I wanted to say about this is just because someone has historically been in your life, whether it is a friend or a family member, or whatever.  If that relationship is not serving you, if that relationship is draining you and making you feel not good…if it is not good for your nervous system, it is okay to take space from that person or even cut them out of your life. Obviously, if you have tried talking to this person before, repeatedly about the stuff that bothers you, and nothing happens then ghost them.  You tried (to make things better), they didn’t.  They didn’t listen.  It’s on them now.  You don’t have to try to get them to change anymore.  Because they are not changing.  They are not respecting your boundaries. They are not making you feel good. And that is not healthy. It’s not good for your overall well being.

If someone has ghosted you, please respect that they have ghosted you.

Don’t try to force them to communicate with you. (Take a hint)

They have probably already tried to communicate with you about what it bothering them, and if you didn’t listen, that’s on you.

As I am recording this, it is the beginning of November 2022, going into holiday season between Halloween and New Years.  There is going to be a lot of people who are estranged from their families, from their friends, and that is 100% okay. It is good and it is healthy and those are boundaries that probably should be in place.

It’s not our job to question people why they put time and space in relationships, or make them feel bad about it, or question them about it, or try to force something on them.  If they are not responding, or if they put a boundary in place, if they are estranged from people, then support them in that.  That is a very hard decision for them to make.  It’s not usually ever taken lightly.

That’s kind of my thoughts on boundaries this week, and this holiday season especially.

• What are some life rules you can put in place for how you want people to communicate with you?

• What kind of time and space might you need from people that aren’t healthy for you?

• How are your relationships and the time and energy it takes to maintain them, the timing and level of communication it takes to maintain them, how is that impacting your nervous system?

• Is it making you feel better? Or is it making you feel worse?

• If it is making you feel worse, then it might be a good time to think about giving it some time and space.

So, that’s it.

If you are interested in being coached around topics like this, check out the links below.

Take care!

If you found this interesting you might want to follow along to the random thought series where I discuss all sorts of random things, connect ideas, share exercises and tools that could be helpful in a really informal way.  Just when I am processing and what’s on my mind

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