In our rapid world oftentimes we find ourselves in unpleasant situation when we don’t have clear line between work and personal time. This line gets blurry even more with work from home and technology we use to do our jobs. It doesn’t matter if you work for a company or if you’re a contractor working with clients.
When a client, a boss, or a colleague call or email you late in the evening or on weekend many feel an obligation to respond. I suggest you don’t. Take care of this call or email next day in the morning. They don’t own you just because they pay you. There is work time and there is personal time.
Moreover even at normal working hours you should be very purposeful with the time you have. Other people want a piece of it. And there are many people around you. If you give away all your time to others, then you will have no time to work on your important stuff. You simply will have no time left.
Here are some approaches you can use to protect your time:
- Communicate and manage expectations. Everything starts with setting right expectations. Explain to your clients, boss, or colleagues when they should expect responses from you and what are the best channels of communication. Setting expectations and boundaries can help others understand and respect your need for uninterrupted work and personal time.
- Make technology serve you and not vice versa. I personally have a couple of simple rules. First of all I turn off notifications in mail and messaging apps on all devices I use. I hate these interruptions when I’m concentrated on important task. Secondly I use separate users on my Mac for personal and professional stuff. Once I switch to personal user I’m automagically not reachable. And lastly on my smartphone all I need is messaging app I can use to drop a message if I cannot attend or will be late to a meeting.
- Learn to say “No”. This is probably the hardest, but most powerful item. It comes in two ways. One is that even when you see a message from a client or a colleague outside of your working hours, say “No” to your temptation to answer. You shouldn’t answer. I suggest you to handle it next working day. Another one is the fact that there are always more requests than time. So before committing to something double check that you’re not compromising your time for your most important tasks.
- Plan and prioritize. Start your week with a plan putting in everything important for you before adding anything you would do for others. When you see some of your commitments to others are not working out, communicate this to find a solution suitable for both parties. Please, don’t assume that you have to squeeze in everything you have promised or work overtime. I had a number of cases when it was completely fine to move tasks by a week or two while keeping other people happy at the end.
Set the tone and direction for your relationship with other people. When someone wants something from you, whenever possible deal with this requests on your terms.