Personal time, home time, and family time seem to have gone the way of the rotary dial telephone. However, one of the best ways to start de-stressing your life is to establish some healthy boundaries and begin to experience true down time.

Two of the best new gadgets that have come out in the last few years are caller ID and voice mail. Most people already have these and if you don’t, I would suggest investing the few dollars it takes to add this service. Now the hard part of this is training the family and having the self discipline to actually begin setting house rules on private time.

Schedule time after work each day when you don’t answer the phone, pager, or e-mail. Better yet, put all devices on silent and let all calls go to voice mail for that time. Start with an hour during dinner and slowly expand that time to include most of the hours after work. Decide which calls automatically go to voice mail in the evenings if you do decide to leave the ringer on. Most everyone in my family knows not to answer work related calls for me after 5pm unless they ask first. (The call I got last evening at 8pm from my boss was answered by my dear hubby before he checked the caller ID. I would have let it go to voice mail.) If there is an urgent issue, the person can leave a voice mail and I can decide if it is an urgent matter for me. Remember someone else’s lack of planning does not make a matter your emergency!

For kids and teens, set ground rules for telephone conversations during dinnertime, homework time, and after a certain hour in the evenings. I don’t take kindly to folks calling my house after 9pm. It was considered rude when I was a kid and I still think it is rude today. Call me old fashioned if you must. I also don’t mind giving a free lesson in manners to any kid who calls my house after 9pm!!! It’s never too early to learn good habits.

I will be covering the importance of self-nurturing in a later article, but for now make sure you use at least some of this unplugged time to begin connecting with your family, your friends, or to spend some much needed time on YOU, not for laundry catch up, paying the bills, or other have-to’s.

Now, what about setting those boundaries at work? It’s pretty easy to ignore the call coming in to your phone from your boss at home, (oops, I must have forgotten to take my cell phone with me to the store) It gets a bit more difficult when the boss is standing in your face! Granted, there are times when you just get stuck at work and have to chip in to help. However, if these times are more often than not and if you seem to be getting the lion’s share of this type of intrusion, it’s time to start to change things.

Have you ever noticed that there are always one or two gung-ho/go-to people on a team and the rest are I can’t handle that/I’m too busy people? I’m guessing if you are reading this you come from the first group. MANY TIMES I have been the git-r-done person on the team and instead of getting thanks all I would end up with was more stuff to do! This leads to resentment and anger towards yourself, your boss, and others on the team (who say they are too busy working, but are generally hanging out gossiping in someone else’s cubicle while you are working furiously trying to get all that stuff done).

Now is the time to start examining your role at work. (Remember – we teach others how to treat us through our own actions.) Of course, no change happens overnight, but there are ways to start making the workload a bit more equitable. If you are uncomfortable with saying no or telling the truth when you are too busy, here are a few tips to get you started. I will be discussing ways to say no and boundary setting in more detail in a later article.

First and foremost, stop volunteering!!! The next time a staff meeting rolls around and the boss asks for a volunteer (and everyone turns around expecting you to jump in as usual) keep quiet and let someone else take a turn. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. When the boss comes by and asks you to do that one more thing, have a to-do list of things you already have on your plate and ask “What would you like me to eliminate from this list to do the new task? I am already at capacity. People may be surprised and even act peeved at you for not chipping in as usual. That’s ok they will get used to it in time. Another situation is when you constantly have to stay late to do that emergency project. Now everyone has these once in a while that’s just the way business works. It’s when the once in awhile turns in to three days per week and you are the only one getting these projects (aren’t you special?) that action needs to be taken. When the boss comes by at 3:30 for the fifth day in a row with an emergency project say Gosh, I’d love to help, but I have a commitment for this afternoon and must leave on time today. If that’s not a strong enough reason for you, have a dentist appointment, parent teacher meeting, dinner meeting, club function, SOMETIHING that you just cannot miss!! With time other folks will begin to get their share of these special projects, leaving you on the way home on time hopefully more days than not. And remember once you hit the door remember to use that caller ID and voice mail!