The Boundaries That Gave Me My Life Back
In late 2022, work had expanded to fill every available space in my life. I did not need a better productivity system. I needed a line that work was no longer allowed to cross.
the work is meant to support.
When work followed me home
Chaotic organizations create their own weather: priorities change without warning, requests arrive from every direction, and everything feels urgent because no one has agreed on what matters most. Add rapid iteration, ambiguity, and the unspoken idea that work should be its own reward, and even resilient people eventually run out of room.
By November 2022, I was close to burnout. The clearest warning was not how I felt at my desk. It was what happened after I left it. Work was reducing both the quality and the quantity of time I gave my family, and that strain was showing up in every relationship that mattered.
I had treated availability as commitment and responsiveness as impact. Neither was true. Being reachable all the time mostly meant that work could make the first claim on any hour it wanted.
A boundary is not a declaration that work does not matter. It is a decision about what else matters, too.
Old wisdom, applied carefully
I went looking for perspective and found it in the Stoics. Not because a Roman philosopher could solve a modern calendar, but because they were unusually direct about attention, judgment, and the cost of spending a life accidentally.
“We do not have a very short time assigned to us, but we lose a great deal of it.”
Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, I
Marcus Aurelius offered the companion idea: circumstances matter, but our judgment of them is one part we can still work on.
“Things do not touch the soul, for they are external … our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV
The point was not to tolerate an unhealthy situation with a marble expression. It was to stop surrendering the choices that were still mine. I could not make the organization less chaotic overnight. I could decide when I was available, what lived on my phone, and where my attention went first.
Turning reflection into rules
Insight was not going to change my calendar by itself, so I translated it into four visible commitments. Then I sent them to my managers. That mattered: private intentions are easy to bend; shared expectations are harder to quietly abandon.
Working hours
I set my workday to 7:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and blocked the opposite hours as out of office.
No pocket office
I removed Outlook and Teams from my phone. If I wanted to work, I had to make a deliberate choice to open a computer.
Protected focus
I kept Mondays open to absorb the previous week, choose priorities, and begin the new one with intention instead of reaction.
Real recovery
I planned an extended year-end break, built a coverage plan with my team, and asked for help keeping a stable top-three-to-five priority list.
There was another boundary hidden inside that final point: delegation. I needed coaching on how to move work to the team—not merely to reduce my load, but to create room for other people to grow. “I will carry everything” can look like dedication while quietly becoming a bottleneck.
What changed
The changes were uncomfortable. They also worked.
My life at work and at home improved. Slowing down long enough to create guardrails helped me decide what deserved my time before the next urgent request decided for me. Disconnecting became a normal part of the week rather than a reward I might earn after an impossible amount of work.
The organization did not suddenly become calm. The difference was that its chaos no longer had automatic access to every part of my life.
I still believe in ambitious work. I just no longer believe ambition requires permanent availability. Sustainable impact needs rest, focus, and priorities that can survive contact with a crowded inbox.
working for a chaotic leader is like playing a game of Whack-a-Mole, but with random tasks instead of moles
— Mike Stevens (@mike11stevens) March 16, 2023
If work has expanded into every open hour, start with one visible line: a signed-off calendar block, a deleted app, a meeting-free morning. The first boundary does not have to fix the system. It only has to return one choice to you.
