Boundaries are values in action

Boundaries are values in action

Are you regularly giving your writing time away? Do you find it hard to say no to requests for your energy and effort? If you answered yes, then it might be time to reassess your boundaries. In this episode, Jane will explain how tapping into your values will help you protect your boundaries. She’ll also teach you a simple way to understand the relationship between your values and your boundaries. If you’re ready to reclaim your time so you can work and rest in ways that are fulfilling, you won’t want to miss this episode. 

Resources: 

The Right Prose website: www.rightprose.co
Learn more about Elevate: https://elevate.rightprose.co/enroll/
Connect with me on Instagram

Episode Transcript Available

Writing an academic book is challenging, but it doesn’t have to feel like torture. Join me, Jane Joanne Jones, writing coach and developmental editor to Women and Non-binary scholars in academia. As I teach you how to write your academic book with ease, clarity, and purpose, let’s bend the rules, expose the hidden curriculum, and write your book the right way, your way. Welcome to episode six, which is the kickoff to the second half of the very first season of the Right Prose podcast. In this season, I’m sharing 10 lessons I’ve learned over the course of working with academic writers for 10 years. The lesson I have to share today is a bit more personal but relevant to coaching. One of the reasons I released this podcast now is because it’s the 10 year anniversary of my business, and we had a whole celebration planned and a lot of promotions to publicize the new podcast and the new website that we built. 

And at the very last minute, I decided not to do any of the promotions or celebrations. That’s because my grandfather died and I decided to take a week of bereavement leave. Now I’m my own boss, so I’m able to make decisions like this, but it was not without consequences. We have a schedule for the business, and the last four months of the year are our busiest time. There’s not a lot of flexibility to reschedule things, so if we don’t do it on time, there’s a strong likelihood that it just won’t get done. And I decided to take off anyway because quite honestly, I would’ve been useless at work. And also because family is one of my highest values, I’ve always set a boundary in my business that when it comes to matters of my health or family, work will come second. And it’s not always easy to enforce this boundary, and sometimes I need reminding or I need help, but ultimately I enforce it because it’s that important to me. 

Now, in every cohort of Elevate, which is my group program for women and non-binary scholars in academia who are writing books, I have a lesson on setting boundaries. And we start with practical matters like figuring out how much time to devote to mentoring students, attending meetings, serving on committees, all of those obligations. But then we shift to discussing values. And I think this is really important because often in academia especially, especially if you’re socialized as a woman, you’re made to believe that you shouldn’t have preferences or strong opinions. You should just do people tell you to. You should always volunteer, right? You should always raise your hand when there’s committee work to be done. And you should do this without question. It’s expected of you in a way that quite frankly, it’s not expected of men in academia or people who are identified as men. 

They’re not expected to do all of the service and mentoring and kind of care work that women are expected to do in academia. And here’s an example. I remember coaching a client who was a junior faculty member, and she had several older male colleagues who would call her at home in the evening to discuss research. Number one, this is inappropriate on so many levels. They were calling rather late and she didn’t want to talk to them, but she wasn’t sure what to do. So I coached her to just not answer the phone. And there were two boundaries at play here. The first was that she didn’t want to talk to her colleagues outside of the office. Also, she didn’t really want to talk to anyone that late. She wanted to rest and relax because it was the evening and she wanted to chill out. But in order for her to summit her courage to ignore those phone calls, she had to tap into her values about professionalism and the importance of rest. 

And she was worried. She was worried that her senior colleagues would be angry, but ultimately they weren’t. She was able to resolve the situation without drama. And it’s normal to be worried about the consequences of setting a boundary, but I’m going to be real with you and tell you that sometimes you give away your power too quickly. We’re all academics here. If you study power, you know the consequences of giving away your power too quickly. Nobody’s ever going to give it back to you. And that’s why it’s so important to tap into your values. When you establish a boundary, it’s going to be easier to say no when you have a strong reason behind the no, not because you owe everyone an explanation, but instead to remind yourself why your boundary is so important. So as you’re writing a book, you are going to encounter all sorts of requests for your time that are going to take you away from your book. 

You’ll say yes to some of them, but you’re going to have to say no to a lot of them because if you repeatedly violate your own boundaries around protecting book writing time, you’ll begin to resent your book. And when you resent your book, you will avoid writing your book. This is not how we create a sustainable writing practice. We cannot build a sustainable book writing practice if we resent working on our book. So tapping into your values will help you write your book in a way that helps you feel energized rather than depleted. So what are some examples of values that you might want to implement into boundaries? Right? The name of this episode is Boundaries Are Values in Action. So what are some values that you might want to put into action? One might be real self-care, like getting enough sleep that might be a value to you. 

It’s really important for me to take care of myself in this way, yet you keep staying up late. Then waking up at 5:00 AM to write. You’re not enforcing the internal boundary of I need to get eight hours of sleep each night to show up in the world the way I want to for myself and for other people. Another example might be family like me, but maybe you’re always missing your kids’ games because you’re taking on extra committee work. You’re the one raising your hand to say yes because nobody else in your department is doing it, and you feel like it’s your obligation, but in the meantime, you’re violating your own values which are being there for your family in certain ways. A value can also be excellence in your scholarship, and maybe you don’t want to disrupt your workday doing tours or errands because you have a more flexible schedule than your partner or other family members. 

And as academics, we hear this all the time. You’re off for the summer. You can do all of these things that aren’t related to your job, and meanwhile you’re like, I got to write this book over the summer, or you’re not in class at this time teaching. Therefore, your time is flexible when really it isn’t. I mean, I know that I have had to set clear boundaries with family members around calling me in the middle of the day just to say Hi, because I work from home and I don’t have time to chitchat for a half an hour on a Tuesday afternoon just because I work from home. So once you establish what your values are, it’s going to be easier for you to enforce some boundaries. Enforcing boundaries does not mean that you are being selfish because most of the time, often people don’t know that they’re violating one of your boundaries because you haven’t told them what your boundary is. 

They don’t know that if your office door is closed, it means that you’re writing and you would prefer not to be interrupted, that you invite people into your office when your office door is open. They don’t know that unless you tell them they don’t know that you leave at exactly five o’clock on the dot on Tuesdays because you want to go see a soccer game or a recital or what have you, right? People don’t know that. So boundaries are not about being selfish. They’re about showing people how to interact with you in ways that allow both of you to show up for each other in positive and affirming ways. And when it comes to book writing, especially, and I’ve said this before, you’ll hear me say it so many times. It is a long-term process. Writing a book takes time. So you want to make sure that the practice you create around writing that book is sustainable. 

It will not be sustainable when you are constantly giving up your book writing time for commitments that you really don’t want to follow through on for doing things that you would rather not do. Does that mean you’re always going to have complete control over your time? Of course not. That’s not labor. We don’t always have complete control over our time. But being proactive about deciding, even if it feels slightly aspirational, being proactive in deciding how I want to use my time and how that use of time reflects what is important to me will give you a better chance of having control over your time than anything else. So hope this episode was valuable for you, and I would invite you to think about a value you have and a boundary you would want to implement to protect that value. And until then, I’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. If you like what you heard, please share the podcast with a friend. Or if you’re an Apple listener, leave a review. It helps other folks find the podcast so we can continue the conversation and make sure that when it’s time to write your book, you could do it on your terms your way.

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