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Building a remote culture that enables your team is no easy feat. If you succeed you’ll unlock the agency and autonomy that comes with a well managed remote operation. If you don’t succeed you end up burning out from bad habits.

In this biweekly podcast you'll hear, from both Alix and guests, all about remote teamwork from a zillion different angles. It'll be focused on fresh perspectives, and always include suggestions for you to put new practices into place.

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Episode 5 | Boundaries & work-life balance with Mehan Jayasuriya

E05
/
May 3, 2023

In this week’s episode, Alix talks to Mehan Jayasuriya, Senior Program Officer at the Mozilla Foundation, about creating and sticking to boundaries in remote work.

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about the episode

Boundaries, they’re not just for your in-laws…

In this week’s episode, Alix talks to Mehan Jayasuriya, Senior Program Officer at the Mozilla Foundation, about creating and sticking to boundaries in remote work.

Alix and Mehan dig into the perils and possibilities of working remotely as parents of young children, and Mehan shares practical advice for working across timezones, setting clear expectations with colleagues, and making progress (even when your toddler didn’t sleep last night…).

You can find Mehan and say hello here.

our key takeaways

1. Being less available doesn’t (always) mean getting less done

If you feel pressure to be ‘always on’ or work in a team where having lots of meetings is equated with being productive, setting boundaries can be hard. For Mehan though, good boundaries have resulted in higher-quality work. By declining meetings that took up time in his calendar without big pay off, and saying no to extra projects that don’t advance his core work, he’s made time for more focused, more productive work. Cutting superficial work time makes space for his life but also for the deeper work that really moves work forward. It’s a win-win.

2. Clear expectations make good boundaries possible

Mehan points to clear expectations from his manager as the key to success in making and keeping boundaries: he knows what success looks like for his role and what he needs to do to meet goals. He also knows that it’s his job to communicate his boundaries with his colleagues by blocking his calendar when he’s unavailable (at times like daycare drop-off) and figuring out async ways of working with colleagues. As ever in remote life, communication is essential when it comes to boundaries at work. And being clear can open up conversations about necessary compromises so you can fix problems before they create resentment.

3. Right size tasks for time and energy

Life has seasons. There will be times that you thrive in round-the-clock thinking and doing. When that isn’t possible or rewarding, you’ve got to find efficient ways of getting stuff done. For Mehan, this means creating task blocks on his calendar and then right-sizing tasks to fit those time blocks so he’s not overcommitting to himself or his colleagues. He takes this planning one step further by matching his energy to what he’s working on. Have a 90-minute block to get stuff done but no one in your house slept last night? Today might be a great day for that admin work you’ve been putting off.

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Get your free Remote Ready starter kit.

Discover the 5 states of remote (and which one you’re in)

Find out the #1 dynamic that holds teams back

Get a sneak peek of our signature course

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.