How to set boundaries (like a designer)
I didn’t value my time until I became a designer.
Before design, I worked in fashion content. During this period, I was at mercy to the 24-hour news cycle and the weekend whims of superiors. Additionally, the misguided ‘hustle’ mentality of fashion involved too many late nights and a lack of non-work relationships.
After my career change, my mentality thankfully shifted. In a team meeting, one of the engineers I worked with said he wanted to have less meetings in his schedule. He explained he needed ‘focus time’ to put his head down and do work for at least 3–4 hours per day. If he had too many meetings, with shorter breaks in between, he wasn’t able to build anything meaningful.
Naively, it never occurred to me that I could actually say what I needed to do my best work. Within the design team, I asked other designers if they had a similar mentality to this engineer — what he said resonated, and I knew he was onto something.
Sure enough, other designers had a similar issue. While some were afraid to speak up too, others said that they need at least a 2-hour block of time before they really feel they can get anything useful done in the day. In fact, one designer went as far as to say that they usually asked for 24-hours notice for meetings to be put in their calendar too.
How this applies to you…
Do you know what your boundaries are?
Writing a “manual of me” as a team at work, or even just for yourself, has been a useful way for me to be less ashamed about the boundaries I have. I also try to share this sort of information with people I date or close friends, just so they can understand me better.
Once you have this awareness, making these boundaries tangible (in the form of setting focus time on google calendar, or never giving work people your whatsapp) is a good place to start.
Are you reacting too much to the demands of others?
I listened to an episode of The Skinny Confidential recently where the host spoke about why she doesn’t sleep with her phone in her bedroom. In the episode, she explained that doing this allows her to start her day by putting herself first, rather than reacting to the messages of others or the news media. This was a recent revelation for me, and it has already helped me feel so much better.
Are you in an environment where you can say no?
I did try saying no in some environments in the past, and those conversations did not go well. In fact, I realized I had to exit those environments entirely if I ever wanted control over my life. If you don’t feel safe saying no, just leave the situation to somewhere that will respect you.
This week, I’m challenging you to…
- make a ‘manual of me’
- sleep with your phone in the other room
- Buy an alarm clock like this one
- block out 3 hours of focus-time on a day that’s usually busy
And let me know how you get on — I’m always posting over on LinkedIn, so do come say hello! 👋
