Ep 148: 4 Steps to Get People to Respect Your Work AND Downtime Without Guilt
Episode Summary
Ever wish you could guard your Fridays—and your sanity—without feeling like you’re letting everyone down?
In a world that praises hustle and constant availability, setting firm boundaries as a woman entrepreneur can feel like swimming against the tide. This episode tackles why it’s so hard to disconnect—especially when guilt creeps in or others don’t “get it.”
In this episode, you will…
Uncover four practical steps that help you actually get your time back and help the people around you respect it.
Discover the unexpected mindset shift that makes setting boundaries feel less like confrontation and more like leadership.
Hear the five-second story that changed how I think about asking for help—and why it might shift everything for you too.
Press play to discover how kind, firm boundaries will create a win-win for everyone and propel your business forward.
Links Mentioned:
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Episodes Mentioned:
147. No Time, No Spark, No Problem: The 10-Minute Ritual to Reignite Creativity
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This podcast dives into the challenges of leadership, decision making, and delegation, helping women business owners and mompreneurs overcome overwhelm, decision fatigue, and the guilt of working less. Learn to build powerful habits, embrace smarter working, and master time management by streamlining tasks, implementing business systems, and even prioritising self-care. We explore efficiency, productivity, and automation to create passive income, reduce overworking, and finally take time off—without the fear or shame. Say goodbye to imposter syndrome and people pleasing while running a small business: It's time to shift your mindset, reclaim your work-life balance, and thrive!
Full Episode Transcript:
Jenna Harrison: [00:00:00] In this episode, you'll discover four simple steps to protecting your work and downtime without feeling guilty. Even when others don't really get it. Welcome to the three day work week, helping women entrepreneurs run profitable, meaningful businesses in just three days a week if they like without stress, guilt, or sacrificing growth.
I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, sharing practical strategies, mindset hacks, and even some woo, to help you work smarter leap boldly and find true ballots. Let's dive in. Welcome, welcome back to the three day work week. Today we're going to talk about a line of questions that come up so often, and not just from clients, but from people in my own life too.
It's probably one of the biggest friction points when you decide to shorten your work week or protect the white space in your life. And sometimes it's even a fear that keeps you from trying it in the first place. And the questions are, how do I get people to respect my shorter work week without me [00:01:00] feeling guilty about it?
How do I get them to honor both my work time and my downtime? If you've ever tried to be more focused at work, only to be interrupted repeatedly, or you've carved out space for yourself only to get hit with a last minute favor or a hey, since you're not working on Friday opening, you are not alone.
Because when you try to get more done in less time, people still interrupt you. It's just that you have less ability to entertain their interruptions and with more downtime, they often assume you're more available for whatever is top of mind for them. So in this episode, we're going to get to the root of this and you will uncover four practical steps that help you actually get your time back and help the people around you respect it.
You'll discover the unexpected mindset shift that makes setting boundaries feel less like confrontation and more like leadership. [00:02:00] And you'll hear the five second story that changed how I think about asking for help and why it might shift everything for you too. But first, can we talk about something a little weird?
There is this unspoken belief a lot of women carry that being available all the time makes you a better person, that if you're not responding quickly or showing up constantly or just being there, I. You are being selfish or unhelpful. I mean, how many movies have we seen where there's a parent or partner or friend or child who's portrayed as cold and damaging and in need of redemption of some sort because they're focused on their career or they're too focused on themselves.
They are demonized until they finally see the light and mend their ways. And I mean, I really enjoy a lot of these movies. I. The Devil Wears Prada or Baby Boom, that's from the eighties. I don't know if you've seen that with, uh, Diane Keaton? Is that her name? I think so. [00:03:00] Um, elf, which my family Rees every single Christmas season.
But this message can be toxic. So often in those movies, people have to quit their jobs, right? They have to have these blow up confrontations and completely give up on their dreams in order to, uh, move forward. And I think that can be really damaging for a lot of us that that's kind of the right thing to do.
That's what the good people do. But really, what if it's backwards? What if you being constantly accessible is the thing that's holding you back from being your most impactful, creative and yes, supportive, connected self. I. Because here's what I know, the most effective grounded leaders that I know are the ones who protect their downtime like it's sacred.
They know that their best ideas, their clearest leadership and their deepest fulfillment, really it doesn't come when they're constantly rushing from task to task. It comes from [00:04:00] space. They also know that on top of that, when they're well feels full, and when they do feel fulfilled and when they do are getting these great ideas at work and their business is booming, right, they come back to their other relationships.
Every relationship in life, so much more present, so much more available, so much more interesting to the people around them. And so there's just this false dichotomy that really irks me about how it has to be either or. What if it's not either or? What if it's just about clear boundaries? So if you've been wondering how to make the people around you, honor what you've chosen to do, then here's step one.
It starts with you honoring it first. The very first step is that you have to believe it's okay. This might sound obvious, but it is not. So many people think the issue is other people not respecting their time, right? [00:05:00] Because it's the fault of the other person. But the deeper truth is we don't always respect our own time, not fully.
And that's true with both your work time and your downtime, but it's even harder with downtime, especially when guilt comes in. So we're gonna focus on that. This first step is very internal, right? You have to believe, truly believe that it's okay. Maybe even that it's necessary for you to have some white space.
Now, I'm not talking about downtime as in crash on the couch after a 14 hour day with a glass of wine, 'cause your brain stopped working. I'm talking about intentional guilt-free time, that's just for you. The kind of time that doesn't even have to be productive or that pointedly is not productive in the traditional sense where you can just exist, right?
Just breathe. Rest or be human or daydream. And I get [00:06:00] that this can feel uncomfortable, especially if you're the kind of person who's been rewarded for being a high achiever or praised for always being there. For others. You might be used to seeing rest as something to earn or deserve, and you might have a history of never quite believing that you deserve it yet.
But here's the reversal. Don't think of this as rest. Think of it as CEO time. It's not just your most productive business activity 'cause it's what ultimately saves you tons of time and unleashes your greatest ideas. That's what we talked about in last week's episode, which is a short 10 minute ritual.
So definitely take a listen to that. We'll link to it. But it's really keeping you on top of your game instead of just spinning your wheels, right? And it's also your most fruitful personal activity. It means that you won't be showing up, resentful and short-tempered. You are operating from overflow instead of [00:07:00] depletion.
I've had several clients who were worried about what their partners would think if they actually took some time for themselves. In the end, all of them have been like, wow, whatever you're doing, do more of that. It's like they finally get back that woman they fell in love with in the first place, or an even better version of her.
So just play with this. You don't have to force yourself into something that's too hard to wrap your brain around, but a good journal prompt might be. What would I need to believe in order to feel great about protecting my CEO time? Not saying that you have to believe it yet, but just get curious about what it might be like to believe it and what would look differently in your life or business if you did.
Alright, step two. The next step is talk about it because here's the thing, people can't honor a boundary they don't [00:08:00] know exists. And a lot of us make this mistake, we decide, okay, I am going to shorten my work week, but we don't actually tell anyone maybe because we feel bad about shortening our work week.
So we just hope they'll get the hint when we stop replying to emails after 2:00 PM on Thursdays, or we think. I'm really gonna take some time to reset, but then we feel guilty sharing that and instead we just hope they'll stop asking us for giving us some invitation or sharing an opportunity that tempts us or whatever.
But hope is not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. When you clearly and calmly explain what you're doing and why you create understanding. You take something that might have felt personal, like, why is Jenna suddenly not available, and you turn it into something purposeful. Oh, Jenna's [00:09:00] prioritizing this so she can run her business more effectively and be more present when we're together.
Now, let me give you an example. One of my clients will call her Maya. Was transitioning into a different way of working, and she had always been the go-to person, always there when her husband wanted to talk about his day, always helping out the PTA group, always sending the handwritten cards and the extra cool gifts, but it was draining her to be that person.
So we had her undergo a series of very intentional conversations, and she shared what she was doing and why, and how she was experimenting with this new schedule and really wanted to protect her creative energy. And she still loved her people. She just needed to try this and something beautiful happened.
Most of the people around her were not only understanding, they were inspired, they started confessing how drained they felt. They got super curious about what her schedule was [00:10:00] like and how she was thinking about it and how she was protecting it. Now, did one or two people get a little weird? Sure. That brings us to step three.
'cause here's the truth, no one likes to say. Even when you do everything right, quote unquote, even when you communicate clearly, there's still a chance that someone won't love your boundary, and that's okay. When you shift how you show up in the world, especially if you're used to being always on or always available, you'll likely encounter emotional resistance.
Now, that could be external, like someone makes a snarky comment about how nice it must be to not have a job, or it's internal like you are feeling so guilty and uncomfortable that you're tempted to go back to your old ways. Neither of those mean anything's wrong. In fact, it means that you have a perfectly functional human brain that's adjusting to a new pattern, and so do they.[00:11:00]
One thing I always say to clients, discomfort doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means you're doing something new. And the funny thing is that people don't actually judge us as harshly as we imagine. They'll, there's a famous study published in Psychological Science that shows how we consistently overestimate how negatively others will evaluate us in awkward or vulnerable moments.
And the researchers, they called it the illusion of transparency. Basically, we think people are way more tuned into our inner awkwardness or guilt than they actually are. But even if your aunt doesn't understand why you're not taking her calls during work hours, she'll survive and you will too. And the more you practice doing it, practice being okay with other people having feelings, the easier it gets.
Honestly, the more your perspective shifts and you realize that your aunt [00:12:00] just didn't realize what time it was just she just had a thought she wanted to share and before she forgot it, she wanted to call you and she was totally happy to leave a voicemail. The more your perspective shifts, the more things stop feeling like that big a deal.
Quick personal note here. I remember the first time that I said to my husband, Ben. Actually, would you be able to take the dog to that vet appointment? Since I took her last time, he was in the bathroom shaving and I was sitting on the edge of our bed and I heard him kind of sigh and I literally had to grip the edge of the bed.
I remember it so clearly, and I just breezed like to get myself to survive the next few seconds, which by the way, felt like eons instead of my gut instinct to rebound into. You know what? Nevermind, I can do it. So I breathed through the newness and I just reminded myself that feelings had never killed anyone [00:13:00] until he responded.
And you know what he said? Yeah, totally. He hadn't been judging me and resenting the request. He'd simply been moving his schedule around in his mind and make sure he could do it before he committed to it. That moment changed everything for me. It taught me the boundaries that don't have to come with drama.
We just have to be willing to sit through the five seconds of discomfort it takes to state them or to enforce them until they start to become second nature. Which brings us to step four. You've got to hold the line and give this time to become the new normal. This is where a lot of people falter. They say they want more downtime.
They say they're gonna shorten their work week, or they really do wanna focus and get more done in less time, or they really do wanna commit to that weekly yoga class. But then someone pushes back or a circumstance arises, or they feel [00:14:00] a twinge of guilt, you know, some emotion that they wanna get away from.
Suddenly they're back in the patterns that kept life feeling like such a hamster wheel before they began the project. So look, creating a new boundary is just like starting a new workout routine the first week. Super exciting. And we too, it starts to feel inconvenient and your brain starts to find ways out of it.
If you treat it like a 30 day experiment and you commit to it, no ifs, ands, or buts, the same way that if your child needs to be picked up from school, you know you're gonna find a way to do it, and you're gonna be shocked by how much can change for you. And don't worry, you're not gonna have be that rigid for the rest of your life.
But when you're starting something new, you're starting something new. I remember when a client of mine first started taking Fridays off, even though she informed her client, they were still blowing [00:15:00] up her WhatsApp and scheduling meetings and even asking her to hop on calls. But even though her client brought hundreds of thousands of dollars into her business and she was worried about making them angry, she was able to breathe through it and just not respond until Monday.
When she did, she'd politely remind them that she was not available on Fridays, and eventually it stopped happening and they actually became more respectful and appreciative in other areas too. Remember, we teach others how we wanna be treated, so I recommend making a visible commitment to yourself.
Block the time on your calendar, put your phone on, do not disturb. Create a little ritual that signals, this is my time. Now, whether that is lighting a candle or doing three jumping jacks, or putting a hand over your heart, you get to [00:16:00] train yourself and others that your time is worthy of respect. And yeah, there will be moments where it's easier to just say yes.
Just do it really quickly. Just answer the call. Every time you say yes to something unaligned, you are saying no to the version of you that is asking for more freedom and more flexibility and more access to her flow state. And if that part of you is brave enough to speak up and ask for something different, you better believe she's worth supporting.
So let's recap the four steps to making sure the people around you respect your downtime. Number one, start with belief. You have got to believe it's okay to set these boundaries. Number two, communicate clearly. People can't honor boundaries they don't know exist. Number three, [00:17:00] prepare for discomfort.
Feeling judged doesn't mean you're doing it wrong and feeling wrong doesn't mean you are being judged. And number four, hold the line. Treat it like a real experiment and have your own back. Here's a one last super important point I wanna leave you with. You don't need people to understand your boundaries before you can set them.
Would it be nice? Sure. But it's not a prerequisite. You can respect your own time, even if others are still adjusting. And when you lead with calm confidence, you give them a blueprint for how to meet you. Because training your mind to think uncommonly unlocks a whole new level of impact and possibility.
And at this point, if you're thinking, okay, Jenna, I really think I could do this, but I honestly have no idea how to even carve out time for myself because I've got so much [00:18:00] to do. And it's a huge challenge to even know what to focus on first, to start to change things, and that is exactly why I created the Ultimate Self-Assessment for Unlocking Your Next Level.
It's a tool that lets you analyze where you might be going wrong and refocus on your next best steps, so you're not wasting time and effort on what's ineffective instead of taking advantage of the huge opportunity in front of you to work smarter and not harder. Make more money with more ease. So if you wanna grab this assessment so you'll be able to laser focus on the next step for you, that will actually move the needle.
So you can have a business that supports you and grows even when you're hustling less, then click the link in the show notes so you can download it for free. Alright my friend. Go protect those boundaries. Let's talk again on Tuesday.[00:19:00]
Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the clarity first strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit the uncommon way.com. See you next time.
