Jen looked across at me, listening patiently. A homeless guy rides by on the street behind us on a rental bike. The teachers from the local art magnet school are chattering at the next table. The sun shines. It’s 72 degrees. The day is perfect despite either a hangover, restless sleep or both.
It’s our 10th anniversary. We reflect on where we are and where we’re going. The annual talk about vision and mission come up. We spend an hour talking about it. It could have been an hour writing it. That would have required us to face our fears, begin by starting and learn by doing.
A common conversational theme with my wife, Jen, has been about boundaries. This is an issue for both of us. We have a hard time saying ‘no’. We have a hard time limiting access to keep people from asking for stuff. The result is a lot of context switching, too much starting things, not enough finishing things and too much semi-tasking (the proper term for the misnomer that is multi-tasking).
Peter Drucker describes a key strength of an effective executive (i.e.- a knowledge worker with an objective to execute) as the ability to aggregate and protect what little discretionary time there is available to do real work. This has been a challenge. I’ve started arriving at the office between 6 and 6:30 AM to get some work in before the meetings and conversations consume the day.
Our girls are 6 years old. The pressure of getting ourselves right so they can get themselves right weighs on me. I’m not satisfied with the example we’re setting. I’m not satisfied with the time I miss with them while I’m at work at 6:30 AM attempting to be effective with my time. The girls are paying the price for our weak boundaries.
As we talk about the vision and mission stuff I discover why we suck at boundaries.
It’s ridiculously hard to establish a boundary if you don’t have priorities to define what boundaries are needed. It’s hard to maintain the boundary if you don’t have a deep sense of purpose for why it’s there and the cost of letting someone step on it.
It’s pretty simple, you’ll have weak boundaries when you don’t clearly see where you want to wind up, what values are important in how you get there or what your mission or purpose is in making the journey.
No vision, no values, no mission, no boundaries.
This doesn’t mean don’t bother with boundaries if you haven’t done the first 3 things. It means be patient, graceful and persistent as you mess up the boundaries while you’re figuring out what you want and why you want it.
