Ep 115: Ask Charlotte - How to Set Better Work Boundaries
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
Struggling With Work Boundaries? Read This First.
Maintaining boundaries around work is one of the most common struggles I hear about.
Not because people don’t know they need them.
But because actually holding them feels uncomfortable, inconvenient… and sometimes almost impossible.
If you’re finding yourself overworking, saying yes when you mean no, or letting work spill into every corner of your life — this is for you.
Let’s walk through some practical (and honest) shifts that can make a real difference.
1. Drop the Story You’re Telling Yourself
The first place to start? The narrative.
If you keep telling yourself:
“I’m just bad at boundaries.”
“I’m a perfectionist.”
“I’m addicted to work.”
“I hate disappointing people.”
You’re reinforcing a fixed identity.
Instead of:
“I’m like this.”
Try:
“I’m learning to do this differently.”
That subtle shift matters.
You might genuinely find boundaries hard. But when you frame it as something you’re learning — rather than something you are — you create space for change.
2. Pre-Decide Your Boundaries (Systems Beat Willpower)
If you’ve struggled with overworking before, willpower is not going to save you.
Your systems will.
Pre-decide:
Your finishing time.
The days you will not work late.
The exact windows where overflow work is allowed (if needed).
Appointments that require you to physically leave.
It’s much easier to leave at 5:30pm if you’re meeting a friend for squash or heading to a 6pm gym class. A vague plan to “go for a run” doesn’t hold the same weight.
If work does need to spill over sometimes, contain it.
Maybe it’s Tuesday and Thursday evenings only.
Maybe it’s Sunday afternoons.
But don’t let “just this once” become every day.
Boundaries work best when they’re pre-decided — not negotiated in the moment.
3. Expect Discomfort
This part is important.
Holding boundaries will feel:
Awkward
Risky
Clunky
Possibly guilt-inducing
That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
You don’t need to wait until it feels natural. You can act with discomfort.
Growth often feels uncomfortable precisely because you’re interrupting a long-standing pattern.
4. Prepare Your Pushbacks
When you’re already busy and someone asks you to take on more, it’s hard to think clearly on the spot.
So pre-prepare your lines.
For example:
“I’m happy to help — we just need to decide what drops off my plate if I’m doing this.”
“I won’t be able to complete that until next week. Thanks for your understanding.”
“Let’s look at priorities together.”
I often think of pushbacks as electrifying the fence.
The fence is your boundary.
The pushback is the gentle “zip” that lets someone know they’ve reached it.
When those phrases are rehearsed, they flow more easily when you need them.
5. Ask: Whose Problem Is This?
If you’re employed (rather than self-employed), resourcing is often a management responsibility.
Sometimes the workload genuinely isn’t doable for one person.
If you’re a natural problem-solver, you might assume the answer is to work harder.
But sometimes it isn’t your problem to solve.
If the role is under-resourced, that’s a structural issue — not a personal failure.
6. The Hard Question: How Much Do You Like Your Personal Life?
This one can sting a little.
If your life outside of work feels:
Disconnected
Unsatisfying
Exhausting
Flat
Then work can become the place where you feel competent, valued and successful.
And of course you’ll gravitate towards it.
Sometimes improving work boundaries means improving life satisfaction.
Strengthening your relationship.
Getting support with parenting.
Reconnecting with friends.
Creating things to look forward to.
If your personal life feels inviting, it becomes easier to leave work.
Because you actually want to go home.
7. When Overworking Is Deeper Than Time Management
For many people, overworking isn’t just about scheduling.
It can be connected to trauma — not necessarily big, dramatic trauma, but the quieter experiences:
Learning that achievement earns love.
Being overlooked unless you performed.
Feeling valued only when productive.
If work boundaries keep collapsing no matter what systems you put in place, it may be worth exploring what’s underneath.
You’re not broken.
You’re patterned.
And patterns can be changed.
Final Thoughts
Your work won’t keep you warm at night.
The people who matter most to you are not your inbox.
Holding boundaries might feel uncomfortable at first — but it is entirely possible. I know plenty of recovered workaholics.
You don’t have to stay in this cycle.
And if you need support while you untangle it, reach out.
You’re allowed to build a life where work has its place — but not all of you.
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So welcome along to another episode of Ask Charlotte and this time I've been asked a listener question about maintaining boundaries around work and how to do this differently. So let's get into some advice for this listener that might well fit for you too.
One of the first things if you're wanting to make change in any area of your life is to stop telling yourself the story that you are bad at it. So for a lot of people they have this really big narrative around I'm just really bad at boundaries or I'm just someone who overworks or I'm a perfectionist. Whatever it is that you're telling yourself that is standing in the way of making change, you probably need to drop that story.
So if you've got a story around not disappointing other people or being someone who's addicted to work, that is not going to stand you in good stead in terms of making some change in this space of your life. So I wonder if it's time to drop the story. Now there can be a way to subtly reposition that because perhaps you do genuinely struggle with overworking or not wanting to disappoint people but you can talk about that in a slightly different way.
So I'm learning how to get comfortable with disappointing people and deferring pieces of work beyond what I might like to achieve, managing the fact that other people might not find that convenient, they might be a little bit disappointed but I'm learning that that's actually okay and that's in the best interests of my family, my well-being, my life outside of work. So adopting the I'm learning to do this differently perspective rather than this fixed identity statement of I'm a person who's like this. So that's my first tip, ditch the story you're telling yourself.
My next piece of advice and something I work with a lot of high functioning people around is how to pre-decide your boundaries around work in the tightest way that you possibly can. So perhaps that looks like determining what your finishing time is or making appointments with yourself so you actually have to leave at a particular time. It is much easier to leave work on time if you're going to play squash with that particular friend or you've got a class at the gym that starts at 6pm that you need to make or you miss entirely.
So setting those agreed finishing times and making appointments with yourself that are difficult to get out of are really important. If you've got a plan to do a solo run around the park that's great but if you're struggling with work boundaries maybe you need someone to do that run with so that you've got that little bit of extra pressure and those pre-decided routines that protect you from overworking. Now I get it that for lots of busy people who have demanding jobs there is a reality that sometimes our work flows into our personal time and we can expect that to some extent.
Also there are lots of people now who have less clear boundaries around work because they're not working in a nine-to-five or maybe they're juggling multiple businesses, competing demands. So if you do need to have some catch-up time my encouragement is to determine what that looks like. So is that that you're having two mornings a week where you're getting up early in the morning to get on top of your email inbox or if there is a need to overwork and do a little bit more on something that that's only happening on a Tuesday and a Thursday night or that Sunday afternoons are a bit of a catch-up time.
Determine when those overflow moments are and boundary those so that they are there if you need them but make sure that the default isn't that work can spill into any time that is possible. The reality here if you've had a pattern of overworking, being addicted to your work, struggling with those boundaries around work is that your systems are always going to be greater than your willpower when it comes to maintaining those boundaries. So pre-decide whatever you can.
Now years ago in a particular workplace I was asked to take minutes from a meeting. This is slightly dating me because clearly it was pre-AI but I was asked to take these minutes and what had been the standard practice was that someone would jot notes in the meeting, go away and type them up and send them around and I said I'm only going to do that task if I can bring my laptop, thrash out the minutes in live time and send them around at the end of the meeting. I do not have time capacity within my role to spend additional time getting perfect notes.
So they're going to be short and sharp and action points and if you want me to do this, this is what this is going to look like. So think about what can you do differently within your role with the tasks that you have so that you're able to manage where work pushes out and where tasks overflow within your role. The next thing I would say is expect discomfort.
If you are learning to do things differently when it comes to work boundaries it's not going to be easy. It's going to be something that feels awkward, uncomfortable, clunky, risky, worrying in some way. It's not comfortable to make change from patterns that we've had especially if they've been ingrained across our lives but you can definitely do this if you accept the fact that you don't need to wait until things feel right or ready to implement these boundaries.
You can actually move forward with that level of discomfort and awkwardness and still have the boundaries anyway. If you're struggling with work boundaries having the support of colleagues or your boss or manager is really helpful. Now sometimes when I say this to really busy people they laugh because their entire industry is based around overworking and poor work boundaries or their manager is even worse than them at overworking and maintaining boundaries.
Now I get it that in some industries that is a very real problem and we might laugh that off in a session but also my challenge to people is what is it that you want in terms of what this industry looks like? What change do you want to advocate for? How do you want to be within this and what is the reality of what is sustainable for you here? Because I also think that your boss is not going to like it if you turn around and have to resign at the end of the year because you're so burnt out you can never work in this career again. We need to find ways to show up as a person who does things differently with the boundaries that we need to have to be sustainable in our role and our profession. So if you've got an industry where there is lots of overwork that happens just remember that you either get to be part of the change and part of reshaping that for yourself and future generations in your profession or you stay complicit with what is going on and you ride that wave and tolerate what people before you have.
These might be accepted ways of being within your profession, your particular business or company but that doesn't mean you have to buy into that and the realities of our employment laws are that they are there to protect you against these very issues. Your workplace is responsible for your well-being and if you're self-employed that counts for you too. Another really helpful thing is to have your pushbacks pre-prepared.
So if you're really busy and someone comes and asks you to do something additional, having a couple of quick lines that are pre-prepared is really helpful in terms of pushing back to those additional expectations. I remember saying to a manager I am really happy to do that, I just need to sit down with you and work out what happens with x and y if you're wanting me to do z right now. So being able to talk about how am I going to renegotiate this is really important.
So having those pushbacks or saying look I'm really sorry but I'm not going to be able to get that completed until next week, thanks for your understanding. Having the lines that you can trot out when you need them, the pushbacks that hold the boundaries are really important. I think about pushbacks as being like electrifying the fence.
The fence is the boundary, the line or the limit but the pushback is the zip that lets people know they're at that line and pushbacks are best done when they're pre-prepared so they flow when you need them. The other thing that's worth remembering is whose problem is this? Now I'm really sorry that this does not work if you are self-employed but it certainly works if you're in a business that somebody else owns and especially if you've got some kind of line manager that you report to. Now the resourcing of particular roles is something that is a management responsibility.
I was working with someone recently who was in an environment where they were being pushed beyond belief when it came to what was expected of them in their role. They had demanding clients and demanding bosses but the reality is that what was being asked of them wasn't actually possible for one person and that challenge of resourcing the client task was actually the workplace's problem, their manager's problem and not their problem. One of the things that can be really tricky is if you are a problem solver kind of person you can think that the answer is just in you working harder.
Well actually sometimes it's not even your problem and it's impossible to work that hard and keep up with the demands. So if resourcing is an issue, if things need to be renegotiated in some particular way just consider whose problem is this. Now I'm going to go somewhere a little bit uncomfortable.
If you are someone who is overworking and who is struggling with work boundaries and maintaining those boundaries between your employment and your life outside of that or your calling and your own business and what is going on in your family and relationship then sometimes it can be really important to take a very honest look at how much you like your personal life. If your relationship is not feeling satisfying, if you're not feeling connected, if it's not something that's life-giving for you or if you're struggling with the tasks of parenting and you're feeling really down in the dumps about managing life with your kids or you're struggling to wind down and actually enjoy time with them then maybe those things need some attention because what we're really wanting is to be able to live in a way that is inviting, that we have got more exciting things to look forward to than our work and I get it that work can be really satisfying and can give us a sense of achievement but if we're really addicted to that and the rest of our life is suffering it's probably a good opportunity to look at your life. How can I improve my life satisfaction so that my personal life is calling to me in a way that is really inviting, that I enjoy time with my family, with my children, with my friends and actually holding the balance around work is easier because of what it is that I've got to look forward to.
Now I know that that is an uncomfortable question to ask but so often where people are overworking we need to do some work on what their personal life looks like and how inviting and enjoyable that is. Remember your work won't keep you warm at night and the chances are the people that you're working with at the moment are not even going to come to your funeral at the end of the day. So think about those people who matter most to you and if the reality here is that holding work boundaries is just feeling ultra difficult I would encourage you to listen to my podcast episode about workaholism and workaholism being a trauma response.
So many people have shared with me that this really helped the lights go on for them and helped them understand why they were in this cycle of overworking in the first place. It is so common that working too hard relates to some kind of trauma and I don't necessarily mean capital T big trauma but it can be the little traumas within our lives, the things that have been difficult, the ways that our needs haven't been seen or met or we've been overlooked, the ways that we've learned to get attention and praise and acceptance. So take a good honest look at your life if your work boundaries are something that keeps coming back as an issue.
I know plenty of recovered workaholics. This is a journey that other people have walked before you and is entirely possible. Don't forget to reach out for support if you need help on this.
