Photo by Andy Fitzsimon on Unsplash
Yesterday I talked about implementing boundaries at work and while that is easier said than done, it crucial because if you have strong boundaries at work it will make your boundaries at home a whole lot easier to roll out. When you get home, you shouldn't be doing work. Now for entrepreneurs and people that have really complex jobs, I get it. I've been there. I've worked in IT before so you're basically on call like a physician, from time to time. If you're a senior leader, you're also on call, although depending on how strong your team is and how well you delegate and the boundaries you create in your job opportunities, it can minimize the amount of impact that your work life will have on your home life.
I'm not going to talk about establishing boundaries for how you go about your daily lives in this particular segment. But I do want to focus on the importance of when you get home, you do have a routine that you follow. I've talked about exercising, I've talked about taking care of yourself. I'm a big fan of routines. It doesn't make life boring. I know some people feel that it does. In my opinion, it makes your life easier, because then you've automated a lot of things you're doing in your life and by doing so, it frees you up to be able to do the things you really enjoy and want to do and give you opportunities to go to that last minute concert or that last minute sporting event. Or go to dinner somewhere that you like going to and not have to worry about doing some other work.
Set up your home life in such a way it works for you and the people that you live with. If you're married or have a partner, communicate with them just like you'd communicate with your boss. Let them know what's going on. If you have to do work for example, if there's a special project that you need to spend some time on after hours or at home. Let them know. Give them an estimate of how long it will be and it makes things easier. But again, having control of how you spend your time goes a long way to help you do this. If you're just going through life aimlessly and not really focusing on designing how you spend your time, then your time is going to get away from you and you won't be able to do the things that you really want to do when those opportunities come up.
Insight on how I go about my life: In the mornings, work out, brush my teeth, shower, all the fun stuff that you're supposed to do to be nice to the human race. Then I go to work and when I'm at work, I do my work thing. When I get home, there's chores and things you want to do. Emptying the dishwasher, laundry, all the tedious boring stuff. But going back to the blog about trashing your calendar, again that actually simplifies things because if you don't have a ton of clothes, then what happens is you have to use laundry a little bit more frequently. Now work with me here. That seems like something I already have to do all the time. Yes, but you're also consistent on when you're going to be doing the laundry. Because if you don't, you're going to be out of insert undergarment name here. That's never a good thing.
Structure your home life in a way that works for you. And it takes time. You're not going to roll it out and say okay, here's my life. It's designed perfectly. Things happens, things come up. I'm a big fan of having slack in my life. Let's say I don't do the laundry on a Thursday night like I typically do. All right, well then I'll do it Friday night or early Saturday morning, we'll figure it out. But understand that you need to have some slack in your life to be able to do anything. I know that might be confusing. One, I just said design your life and structure it in a certain way that you know when you're going to be doing things and the time and all of that. Then all of a sudden you get slack and that freedom and simplifying your life will actually give you that opportunity to do so.
Tomorrow I'm going to dig back in to triaging your calendar a little bit. I know we've talked about that before and I've written and had podcasts on that from time to time. But I'm going to go a little bit deeper in to it tomorrow and also talk about some techniques I use to automate my life, so I don't have to think about those things.
So until tomorrow, cheers.