Boundaries
People with typical nine to five jobs often tell me “I would never be able to motivate myself to get any work done if I was self employed.” They say this because they are used to formal accountability frameworks. I don’t have a boss. I don’t have hours that I need to be in the office. I don’t even have an office.
My accountability framework is quite different from that of a W2 employee. I actually find that the opposite is true—I find it difficult to set boundaries. I enjoy what I do and I find it very fulfilling. Also I have nothing to fall back on if I don’t do my job. I won’t simply get a poor performance review if I don’t do well. I will not make money.
Motivating myself is rarely the problem. Far more often, the problem is setting boundaries and leaving time for other things in life besides work that are important.
It’s difficult for self-employed people and solo entrepreneurs to switch their minds out of work mode because they often do not have a office or place of work that they physically get up and leave on a fixed schedule every day. Their career is often intertwined with their hobbies and interests, and they often genuinely enjoy what they do. This does not make it any healthier to work long hours at the expense of personal, social, and family time.
I encountered this challenge this week when I had some strong momentum on a project and I had social obligations coming up that afternoon. afternoon. I opted to continue working on the project and forego the social obligations. I ended up having a very productive day at work, although I ended up working five hours later than I had intended to.
Is this sort of behavior sustainable? No. Is it sometimes essential, especially in the early days of starting a business? Perhaps. Can it be avoided? Maybe. Can it be minimized. Absolutely. Here are two:
- Defining Done - I wrote last week about setting Three Priorities With Done Criteria. This is about how to think about what a “done criteria” are.
- Outsourcing - We don’t have to do everything ourselves. Outsourcing is a related strategy for offloading tasks that don’t need to be done directly by you. It is often far cheaper and easier to outsource a wide variety of tasks.