“If you don’t set up how you want to spend your hours, someone else will find a way for you to spend them.”
- Jadah Sellner, She Builds; The Anti-Hustle Guide to Grow Your Business and Nourish Your Life
Does that quote resonate with you?
It sure did with me. But perhaps not in the way you might think.
Over the past two decades, I have worked really hard learning (over and over again) about the importance of boundaries: how to put healthy boundaries in place AND enforce them, so that I can protect my time and space. Why? So that I can get done the work I want and need to get done in a day…not what other people think I ought to get done in a day.
Over the years, I have developed excellent work habits that have enabled me to get an outstanding amount of meaningful work accomplished…at a nice, slow, healthy pace that ensures I still have plenty of time for maintaining important relationships AND taking proper care of my health—physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
And yet, despite having healthy boundaries in place and the ability (and willingness) to easily say NO to additional requests on my time, a few weeks ago I was faced with a bit of a pickle…that I wanted to share with you in this blog. Because I suspect I am not alone in this particular pickle jar 😊
This fall, I will be traveling with a good friend of mine for three months. I love her dearly, we get along well and we have loads of fun together. But when it comes to having good habits in place…well, let’s just say this: her strategy is to wake up every morning, immediately grab her phone and then just react to whatever is happening in the world and/or deal with whatever demand someone has asked of her since she looked at her phone the night before.
That’s obviously not how I roll…and it’s certainly not what all the productivity experts on the planet are suggesting these days (for good reason). But that’s her business. Except that…it has now become my business. Why? A) Because this fall, we won’t just be traveling together, we’re also supposed to be working on a project together; and B) Because over the summer, even though I did 99% of the travel planning and bookings for our trip, she never got around to completing the 1% of booking tasks I had given her.
Why? Again, that’s her business, so I don’t know for sure. But I strongly suspect it’s because she didn’t see it as a priority task…and/or she hasn’t learned how to put a boundary around a chunk of time in her day when she can do that type of task.
Regardless of her reasons/excuses for not doing these small tasks (such as booking ferry tickets), the fact of the matter is that someone had to do them. And that someone, of course, was me.
Which means that I pretty much planned the entire trip and made all the accommodation and transportation bookings, etc…in addition to all the other work and life tasks that were on my plate over the past few months. Somebody had to.
Needless to say, I am concerned about working with this friend over the coming months. I have no doubt she will do some of the work—the fun stuff she loves to do and is really good at. But the lion’s share of the not-so-fun work? I have a feeling she just won’t “have time.”
Which means it will be me who will have to make time.
This is the sort of territory where resentment starts to build within a relationship. And I don’t want that. I want these next few months to be an amazing, relaxed and joyful travel adventure and a healthy and productive work experience. But that sort of trip/life doesn’t ‘just happen.’ It is the logical result of good planning, great habits and the ability and willingness to honour our commitments to ourselves and each other.
Which brings me back to the pickle jar: what do we do when we have done everything we can to control our own day…and yet someone in our life refuses to do a task that needs to get done—so it ends up on our plate?
Because we all know we cannot control the actions of others.
Your turn…
Have you had a similar experience with a friend, family member or colleague? How did you handle it?
Or…do you consistently find yourself getting to the end of your day, exhausted…and yet frustrated that although you were insanely busy, you never got around to tackling the tasks you intended to tackle…the ones you wanted to…the ones you know, deep down, you really needed to?
If so, you are not alone. Millions of people are experiencing this exact same phenomenon.
I strongly recommend a listen to the Mel Robbins podcast episode, How to Get More Things Done, Stay Focused and Be More Productive with Dr. Cal Newport. It is outstanding.
So why does all this ‘setting boundaries’ stuff matter? Because:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
If you are allowing someone else to call the shots on how you spend your precious day…you’re giving up a lot more than just a busy day of distraction. You’re giving up agency on how you spend your life.
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