Woo! Are we living in a hectic world, right? There’s a lot of chaos happening all over us, and with the performance that I key in on so much, obviously, it’s about being focused on a day to day basis. And one skill that I’ve learned from other successful people is how do they set boundaries, right? How do they actually take care of their own environment, their own schedules, so now they can actually get things done?
I think, in this reactionary society we’re bouncing all over the place and day to day things get pretty wacky. So by setting boundaries, really, what that means is can you actually plan your day out in advance. Can you actually schedule it to where you put those most important things in the start of your day when you’re actually fresh and ready to go?
Well, I found that successful people do that; they actually schedule and block their time successfully.
Now, they actually add a little buffer time in there, right, because there are distractions that come throughout the day, and they buffer that for the rest of the day.
Next, though, is when you set boundaries, it’s a lot about your communication styles. And so what I found is that when people can batch their emails, for instance, is if they’re not constantly just responding to emails all day long, they’ll say, “Okay, 12:00, 30 minutes: I’m going to do all my email communication. 12:30: I’ll do all my voicemails and call those back.”
Then, what ends up happening is when you batch your communication, you can get it done in a more efficient manner, and you’re not always just responding and reacting to everything that’s coming in.
You set that boundary of how you’re going to communicate back to the world.
Successful people also know how to say, “No,” okay? They say, “No,” before they say, “Yes.” I know that’s something that I’ve struggled with, is that I want to say, “Yes.” I want to be a people-pleaser. I want to help people. Yet, that now gets into the other things that are priorities in my life, so learn to say, “No,” before you say, “Yes,” to be able to create a boundary for your time and your resources.
Successful people with their boundaries they actually, they create self-care practices that are non-negotiable. What I mean by that, whether it’s exercise, meditation, yoga, family time, is that that is crucial for them, because they know if that is taken care of they will be higher performing throughout the day.
Successful people, also, with their boundaries, are very intentional with meetings. I mean, how many meetings have you gone to where you go, “Wow. This is a waste of time,” or nothing was accomplished. Well, I’ve seen successful people in how they create agendas; they actually put a time cap on it. They know what the goals are for that meeting in advance. You’re creating a boundary. We’re not getting off the rails of this.
When we now look at our schedule and we look at our practices, and now we look at our meetings and we put all these things together, we’re now creating those boundaries at work that can help us because certainly more efficient and effective but staying focused throughout the day.
Do you have boundaries at home, also? I know that was a challenging thing, being that I have my own business is how do I create boundaries at home?
One of those is that I turn off all digital communication after 8 o’clock, and many of you go, “I can’t do that! I can’t do that!” Well, create a boundary that works for you, so now you’re not mixing work and family so much because boundaries can provide structure, right? They can now make us less reactive and more responding.
Start today by creating some boundaries that will help you because more focused, more productive, so you can perform for success.