"How do you stand up for your boundaries and not become a workaholic?" - O.S., 26, works in media
When I read this question, my mind immediately flitted to one of my first jobs. Technically, I was working with kids, but I ended up spending a remarkable amount of time scrubbing a single-stall bathroom that saw too much action to ever feel fully clean. I was in high school and stayed late, unpaid, nearly every day, taking on tasks that had nothing to do with my job description — including, more than once, cleaning vomit off the floor [that] my boss had clearly seen and left behind. Back then, I thought of it as "going above and beyond.” It never occurred to me to say, “No.”
My experiences are nothing compared with some boundary violations too many workers endure. But I’m sharing this story because there’s a misconception that we all enter the working world knowing what a boundary is and how to enforce it. I operated from a baseline level of panic that any objection would lead to me being fired, and that I needed to “pay my dues.” I built those habits like a staircase, climbing steadily toward “workaholic” not because I aspired to have my life consumed by work, but because I let every job run me.
The fact that you’re asking about standing up for boundaries leads me to believe you’ve identified them, which feels like a huge step. But I’ve noticed so much well-intentioned advice about having boundaries between work and life comes in the form of “just say no,” and “make time for rest,” which feels unhelpful if you have no idea how to tell a boss no, or if resting stands in the way of you being able to pay rent. To really answer this question, we have to start interrogating why work makes it so impossible to set boundaries to begin with. (TLDR: capitalism.)
Much of the advice out there about achieving work-life balance — or setting boundaries between work and life — puts the onus on individual workers, Meghan Racklin, staff attorney with A Better Balance, tells me: “That won't necessarily help workers whose workplaces and working conditions make work-life balance difficult to achieve.”
Depending on the job, your lack of work-life balance — or boundaries between work and life — might look like the boss emailing you at 11 p.m., a lack of days off, or a workload that’s disproportionate to your pay. It can also mean unfair, inflexible schedules and practices that make it nearly impossible to control your time. For example, Racklin tells me, lots of low-wage workers are subject to mandatory overtime policies, unpredictable scheduling, and punitive attendance policies, which make it challenging to take time to care for themselves and their loved ones.
There is so much overwork, it’s easy to get lost in it. Depending on your employment, how you defend work boundaries might look and feel different. But it’s helpful to remember that work-related lack-of-boundaries crises are often structural, not personal. In other words, many people wouldn’t overwork if they weren’t forced to do so. (It is the single-largest risk factor for occupational disease, and has harmful impacts on physical and mental health.)
To that end, there's an urgent need for structural policy that reimagines the workplace to ensure workers have access to paid leave and sick time, fair and flexible scheduling, and reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, disability, and caregiving needs, Racklin says. Those policies will benefit all workers in all industries, making it possible for people to set boundaries in the first place. (While we’re here, this is also a good list of reasons to unionize your workplace. Collective power for workers means more control over our schedules. We don’t need only individual boundaries; we need structural, collective ones.)
Relatedly, it’s important to point out that there is a distinction between someone who is considered a “workaholic” and someone who has to work an extreme amount of hours. A workaholic, according to research by Malissa Clark, Ph.D., tends to feel compelled to work because of internal pressure, performing beyond what’s reasonably expected of the worker (beyond the requirements of the job or the worker’s economic needs), and has persistent thoughts about work when not on the job. Maybe you have felt this personally already, but research has also found that “some of the strongest negative relationships were found between workaholism and job stress, work-life conflict and burnout.” According to Dr. Clark’s findings, workaholism isn’t significantly related to performance. Though you might spend more time thinking about or engaging in work, it doesn’t necessarily make your work performance better.
If you’re someone who feels your identity is interwoven with your work, you might fall into this category — no shame, it’s something I work on unraveling all the time. If you’re working because of internal pressure, better protecting boundaries can look like what Maryana Arvan, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychological & organizational science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, calls “psychological detachment,” or refraining from work-related thoughts.
“Most of us don't just have work as an identity. We have many identities,” Dr. Arvan explains. Prioritizing recovery means centering those other identities. While Dr. Arvan and I chatted, I considered all the times I thought of my own rest or recovery as things that had to be earned. The endless churn of capitalism turns output and performance into placeholders for self-worth, and warps the very things boundaries are often set up to protect — personhood, free time, fulfillment, caretaking, rest — into luxuries rather than necessities.
It’s easy to let the people we work with believe we’re available at any time, so adjusting expectations is one of the other ways to protect boundaries, says Dr. Arvan. This could look like:
Setting boundaries
When possible, leave work at work, even if it means turning off your computer or using the “do not disturb” feature on your phone. Set clear expectations with your employer and coworkers about your hours. Build other routine-based elements into your day: phone calls with friends, a walk, and practicing something that makes you feel curious or creative that isn’t connected to the work you’re trying to structure boundaries around. It sounds small, but it adds up.
Similarly, knowing your rights — what you are entitled to in your workplace — helps advocacy for more equitable workplaces as a whole. A Better Balance has a know-your-rights hub that explains workplace rights by state.
Determine what’s interfering with boundaries
When supervisors push back on boundaries, there’s an inherent power imbalance, especially for workers with marginalized identities, who tend to have greater non-work demands and face more barriers to advancement, says Dr. Arvan, who suggests the following:
- Assess whether it’s a supervisor-specific problem. Dr. Arvan points out that employees are more likely to detach from their work when supervisors do and recommends having honest conversations with supervisors about breaching boundaries, such as emailing at all hours. “You can approach it from a problem-solving perspective,” says Dr. Arvan, "asking for input on your workload, or how to structure your tasks to make sure you can fully power down and disconnect after hours.”
- Talk to your coworkers. If they’re enduring similarly dismissed boundaries, it points to issues within the workplace as a whole.
- And if that’s the case, consider applying elsewhere — and you can. According to Dr. Arvan, if the expectation is for employees to always be “on,” seeking another opportunity might be the best choice: “It's okay to let your values on work-life balance shape your decision to accept or keep a job.”
We’re told so often that having no boundaries around work will help us get further in our career, and we can rest later. But “later” never comes. “Later” is not a boundary. Sometimes it feels as though we need a permission slip — though we shouldn't — so consider this one: It’s easier to prevent yourself from becoming a workaholic, driven by internal pressure to work, by knowing, deep in your bones, that there is more to you than your paid labor. And knowing that is also worthy of practice.
Forgive me for getting a little sappy here, but I imagine who I am outside of work by thinking about the things I love. I am someone who loves to listen to friends, family, and loved ones; a person whose main ambition is to adopt a kitten; a slow but enthusiastic baker. When guilt pounds in my chest for saying no or setting a work boundary, I ask: Aren't those parts of me worth protecting? Those are the parts that will remain, after all, when my chronically ill body forces me to take a break, when I’m laid off, when I fail at work, when I don’t know what I’m working toward anymore. Now I think of a work boundary as something that defends everything I am and want to be outside of being a worker. If you struggle with saying no, think of it less as protecting a work boundary, and more about protecting the you that carries you through your life — not just your job.