Boundaries at work help maintain work-life balance

      The workplace of today places colossal challenges and work-life balance is one of the greatest ones. In case, one is not able to prioritise work and personal obligations, life can become very stressful. Stressed life impacts individual wellbeing and thus adversely affects productivity air work. Under such circumstances, it is in the interests of one’s work and individual self to set boundaries and priorities at work. in case one does not do so, his or her physical and emotional health will be crippled.

A disturbed work-life balance plus the many distractions that exist at a wordplay compounds the many problems faced by working people. It is necessary that steps are taken to do away with distractions and measures instituted to fix boundaries so that a workable work-life balance is accomplished. This cannot be regarded as an easy task, but will have to be embarked upon to protect your comfort zone.

When you decide to fix boundaries, it necessitates changing your disposition vis-a-vis different issues pertinent to your professional and personal planes. Your personal and working life needs to have a clear demarcation and without it, there will not be any stability. The foregoing calls upon drawing lines somewhere in a positive manner.

Setting boundaries is a difficult effort, mostly because of mental apprehensions and remorse associated with them. The apprehensions could well relate to outcomes if you go about altering your working style and routine. Remember that any alteration or modification to your working style will generate some opposition and hostility because of thee inconvenience caused to others. You may feel that you may hurt others and come to be regarded as as a selfish individual. But in case you do not deviate from your path and do not lose sight of your career objectives, the apprehensions that you may harbour will automatically be set aside. It is because of this reason that any initiative taken in this direction is plagued with difficulties.

If you seek to fix boundaries and priorities, you should learn the art of declining and the proficiency to safeguard your valuable time. During the course of their work time and also leisure, most people are unable to decline and cannot protect their time. This is because assignment of tasks at workplace is a never-ending and thankless activity that is bound to generate some vexation and irritation. In view of the foregoing, the process of laying down boundaries and priorities should not be enforced hastily and instead, executed in a gradual manner to rule out any chances of remaining frustrated. Your boundaries and priorities help in protecting your time, freedom and ebullience, however, you should have no doubts about the following two imperatives:

• Need to have priorities: Your intentions and rationale behind laying down boundaries could be many and varied. You may want to finish an assigned task much before the deadline. You may want to have adequate time to pursue your leisure activities or spend moments of togetherness with your family. It is also possible that you have not been able to hang out with your friends and feel that henceforth you need to engage yourself more in group activities with them. When you examine the need to have boundaries at work, the focus of attention will shift on you and thus remain conscious of the need to operate within the boundaries set.
• Preconditions for saying ‘No’:  The first initiative is to become aware of what you should decline and who has to be declined.  Saying ‘No’ does not imply being absolutely explicit or inflexible. Limited acquiescence can be offered to others without impacting your objectives. For example, you may be called upon to put in extra hours of work which otherwise you may not agree to under normal circumstances. But you may not want to refuse flatly to the directive and hence agree to stay back only a particular day. Your action is actually a refusal but simultaneously also acceding to the request.

You can meet your career aspirations as also help others in meeting theirs as also fulfilling organisational responsibilities by setting boundaries and priorities that are pragmatic. Your boundaries and priorities will not affect the chances of a rewarding career; instead, the time that you will have to yourself will facilitate that. However, you will have to alter your outlook and discern what matters to you and what does not; and thus bring about workable boundary lines. As and when you start actuating your boundaries, you will realise the boost to your wellbeing and your associations with others.