Time Boundaries: The What, The Why, The How

Many of us struggle with the feeling of being flooded by responsibilities, relationships, and the negative impact of a lack of self care. Maybe you’re overwhelmed by the several social dinners you have scheduled for the week, the work emails expecting your response on a Friday night, or the daily phone calls you just have to pick up from your mom. While it is definitely hard to manage it all, creating boundaries for your time can help you better show up for yourself and for others. 

What Are Time Boundaries?

Time boundaries are the way that we put limits or constraints on the way that we spend our time. Time boundaries define how we use our time, communicate to others what to expect from us during specific times, and prepare us to prioritize and manage our time in a way that reflects our values and goals. These boundaries are relevant in all contexts of our lives including social, academic, vocational, emotional, and physical. 

Examples of Time Boundaries

Social: Cece only goes out for drinks with her work friends once a week because she finds that she exceeds her social battery and takes away from her amount of rest if she goes out more than that. 

Academic: Max makes sure that he does all his class readings right after class because if he waits longer than that he either doesn’t get it done, or rushes to read before class, both of which give him anxiety. 

Vocational: Lydia does not respond to work emails on the weekends or on evening nights past 6:00 PM because she wants to make sure that she can focus on her husband and kids in a way that aligns with her goals for being a loving and attentive partner and parent. 

Emotional: Brooke only has therapy sessions on Friday afternoons because she knows that her emotions can become too activating to handle at other times of the week when she has to go right back to work. 

Physical: Andrew makes sure that he gets to bed around 10:30 PM every night because he knows that he needs enough sleep each night in order to show up well rested and healthy for the next day. 

Why Are They Important? 

Time boundaries are important because they can help you create structure and expectations for yourself and others about how you utilize your time. When taken seriously, these boundaries can set the stage to help you prevent burn out, maintain your physical and mental health, and to accomplish your goals. Without these boundaries, we may find it hard to prioritize our time in a way that works for us, that other people feel comfortable wasting or taking advantage of our time, or that we get paralyzed from how overwhelmed we are with everything on our plate. Time boundaries are how we show ourselves and others that our time and energy matters. 

Assessing Your Current Time Boundaries 

In order to determine what boundaries you need to make, we need to assess what is working and what is not working so far. It may help to ask yourself the following:

1. How do I feel about the way that I manage my time now?

2. How do I feel about the way others treat my time?

3. Are there any people that my current time boundaries are too loose or too rigid with? 

4. Are there any contexts in which I struggle more or less with keeping my time boundaries?

5. What are factors that prevent me from having stronger boundaries around my time? Are these factual or anxiety based? 

6. How may my life be improved if I had more boundaries with my time? 

How To Make Time Boundaries 

Making time boundaries doesn’t have to be overwhelming or hard. In fact we can use the following formula to put it all together:

The change I want to make + Timing + How I make it happen + Rewards or consequences + How I need to communicate it = Time Boundary 

Example: I want to limit how often my mom calls me + I only want to talk on the phone twice a week + I will schedule two evenings to call her per week onto my calendar + If she calls more than twice I will text her that I am busy and won’t pick up + I will tell my mom that I will make sure I call her twice a week but that when we talk everyday I can get overwhelmed because there are other people also calling me that I want to talk to = Time Boundary

Example: I want to increase my self care + Everyday I will spend 1 hour doing self care activities before bed + I will not make plans during the hour before bed and I will prepare self care activities in preparation + If I do myself care routine everyday I will reward myself with a fun activity at the end of the week + If someone tries to call or hang out during this time I will them I am busy or occupied = Time Boundary 

Now You Try!

When starting to make boundaries, it’s often helpful to start small before changing all aspects of your life at once. Experiment with a time boundary that feels the least anxiety inducing and allow yourself to naturally experience the reinforcement of increased positive emotions and decreased discomfort and stress. Your time matters and feeling more in control of it can give you back your life. Boundaries around time can promote balance, decrease anxiety, and allow you space to be human again.