7. Rule Setting

How many times, while reading this book, have you paused to check your phone? Emails, text messages, social media—we are always connected and we expect that we can always gain access to our contacts, business, or social network.

Organizations are morphing along with their employees. A few decades ago, when someone left the office, that was the last contact they had with work until the next business day. Certainly some would take paperwork home, but on the whole the average office worker finished their day, went home, and didn’t hear from the office again until the next day.

The arrival of email did little to change that. The emphasis gradually shifted from in-person meetings and telephone calls to the speed and efficiency of email. Then, in 1999 a Canadian company called Research In Motion released a device called The Blackberry—an email pager. That probably marked the turning point for many employees. From this point on, email followed them out of the office. Smartphones appeared in 2003, and email became ubiquitous; no longer tethered to the computer, email was now in the pockets and purses of employees everywhere.

The Blackberry phone became a symbol in many organizations that you had in fact made it. They were issued to members of staff considered important enough to need 24/7 contact with the organization. They became the aspirational symbol of middle managers everywhere. Giving your undivided attention in a meeting was no longer a requirement if you were glancing at your Blackberry; obviously you had important things to focus on.

Ten years later and recent surveys show that American parents feel that 12 is the age at which it is appropriate for children to receive their first mobile phone. This, in terms of high school cool factor, means a smartphone. No longer restricted to the executive, email-enabled phones are in the hands and backpacks of children across the U.S. and in many other countries too.

We have created a 24/7/365 society. Always on, always connected and always ready to respond. The current generation of workers, including those who are just entering the work place, are still too young to have lived solely in this environment. An intern joining a company today would have been 12 or 13 years old when smartphones arrived. Unless they were extremely privileged, they were unlikely to have been among the early adopters of them.

The next generation, however, will have been born into a world where always on is the norm. They will enter the workforce expecting nothing less than to be in constant communication with the organization they work for—not a welcoming prospect for them, if you ask me. Of course, they won’t feel this pull in the same way we do, because they will find it natural, just as we find it natural to announce that we are taking “tech breaks” from time to time.

I know a few people, even today, who find the thought of not having their phone in their hand or at least within easy reach quite disturbing; they are unable to maintain conversations without glancing at the screen, and should the device run out of power—or worse still, succumb to some technical malfunction—they are thrown into chaos, usually taking to their favorite social network via a computer to share the horror of not being able to communicate using their phone.

The phone is no longer simply a method of communication, it is a manner of self and group validation. Through the smartphone, the user can share, in real time if they wish, their every waking moment. They can emphasize how great or how badly their life is. They can share the music they are listening to, their location, and images of what they see around them or of the food they are eating. Communication via the phone is no longer restricted to the verbal; it is images, sounds, and the written word.

The Monday-to-Friday 9–5 workweek is a dim memory for most people working at any mid- to large-sized organization (small business owners and entrepreneurs have rarely enjoyed that luxury). The demands on the employee to be as efficient as possible, to “achieve more with less,” have increased dramatically over the past decade. Although we are still in a society of hourly waged and salaried staff, the disparity that used to exist between their rates of pay has declined in real terms.

Think through this example: A manual worker, working for a large organization as part of an on-site maintenance team, earns $23 per hour and works, without overtime, 40 hours per week. They receive a gross pay of $920 per week. A salaried worker at the same organization, in junior management, earns $95,000 a year, a gross weekly wage of $1,826—on the surface of it, double the money. However, divide that by 70 and you arrive at an hourly rate of $26 per hour. Where did I get the 70 hours from? I am including all the time spent at home before going to work, the time on the journey home from work, the time in the evenings after work, and the time during the weekends that the average organizational employee spends checking work emails and responding to them outside of “office hours.”

Those additional hours are not accounted for. They are not factored into the salary budget, nor are they recompensed directly. Now, of course, there are “perks” designed to offset some of this inconvenience. Perhaps the organization supplies the phone or pays the phone bill and allows any personal use of the phone that the employee wants. Where this happens, though, the organization usually wants to own the device in some manner, either by controlling what apps can be installed or by installing monitoring software on the device to check for usage.

So we have a group of employees who are now perpetually tethered to their organization. Oh, and that maintenance worker, he was issued a smartphone, too—just in case there is an emergency! In effect, what has happened is that organizations have, knowingly or unknowingly (depending on your view of corporations), tapped into the social behavior that was already appearing and commandeered it for their own benefit. In the world of dog training, this is called behavior shaping. This sounds all very sinister and almost conspiracy theory like, doesn’t it? Of course, an employee is free to turn off that phone or other device at any time. No one says they have to work the evenings and weekends, but (and here is where it becomes even worse than someone saying it) it is expected, not just by managers but by peers. We are back to the connectedness of our network. Where once we reserved evenings and weekends for family and friends, now work colleagues have the expectation that you can be reached then as well. Peer pressure, as we all have experienced, is a powerful thing. A few Monday morning comments about how someone was hard to reach over the weekend and suddenly you are checking your work email instead of enjoying that walk in the park.

Without wanting to sound like a first-year political science student fresh from their first reading of Das Kapital and Marx’s theory of the ownership of the means of production, organizations are benefiting from the new social norm of “always on.” The toothpaste is out of the tube; what has been unleashed cannot be put away. The change from analog to digital in both the technical sense and the sense of being able to demark and delineate work and personal time has happened and continues to do so. We are probably the last generation of workers who will have a clear memory of what that divide looked and felt like. We might pause for a moment to mourn its passing, but my phone just told me that there was a new email waiting for me so I’ll read that instead.

So addicted to our devices are we that social games are being invented to try and hold back the inevitable tide of perpetual connectedness. Phone Stack is one name for the social game where everyone at lunch or dinner puts their mobile phones in a stack on the table. The first person to pick up their phone during the meal has to pick up the tab for the entire meal. As much as a deterrent as paying for an entire table of food might seem, it doesn’t deter the most ardent of phone users. In fact, I would hazard to guess that some people would pick up their phone simply to show just how important or how addicted they are—a kind of badge of honor.

Quaint social games will not stem the flood of phone usage, and I am not convinced we should try. Although we are, at the most basic level, becoming slaves to our own machines, it is far more complex than that. We created the systems that have ensnared us, but we have also benefitted greatly from them. The ability to be able to stay in communication with others without being tethered to a location has benefits that, in many cases, outweigh the detriments. The world in which we live and work has and continues to change. Change, it is often said, is the only constant in the human state. Although we might reminisce and even mourn the passing of our “golden age,” the lone driver stuck with a broken-down car on the side of a dark highway in the rain is probably very thankful that the small device they carry keeps them connected to the world while help arrives. Sometimes it is only in the absence of something that we truly understand its value. I read recently a story of a group of friends who had decided to take their motorcycles on a vacation trip through Baja Mexico. They had a great time and were on their way back to the United States when they noticed one of their party was missing. The group circled back and found the crashed motorcycle at the side of the road. On first inspection it appeared their friend had died in the accident. No one had a cell phone signal. So they had to sit on the side of the road, with their friend’s body for over an hour until a car came along. It was later discovered that the rider had died of dehydration. A poignant story: The phone might not have made a difference, perhaps the rider would not have been revivable had emergency services been called, but what is certain is that the group of riders, with no method of calling for help, were left alone with their thoughts and the body of their friend.

More recently, with the ability to stream video with phones, I’ve seen more people in airport lounges not just making phone calls home but using video conferencing from their phones to stay in touch. My girlfriend and I use it all the time when one of us is on the road. Somehow being able to trade stories of our day and see each other at the same time makes the connection more real than simply hearing a disembodied voice. I’m sure that Alexander Graham Bell would not only approve of the distance his invention has come, in 1891 he actually predicted that it would be possible and sketched out notes on how it might work. From his first phone call, conducted only 100 years after the United States’ declaration of independence, to the first video call from the top of Mount Everest a scant 137 years later, the phone has come to dominate our lives, both social and professional.

As I have mentioned in earlier chapters, it is my belief that the mobile phone has been the singularly most impactful piece of technology in modern human history and will continue to shape and change our behavior to such an extent that society as we recognize it today will be unrecognizable in less than 100 years from now. The mobile device (I doubt we will continue to refer to it as a phone for much longer) has already become wearable. Google are experimenting with the Glass project, a system that presents data visually to the wearer of Google Glasses. At present, it still requires a connection to a mobile phone to operate, but wearable technology is the next obvious step in the drive to an always-on society. Beyond that, who knows? But it is not impossible to think that surgical implants will become a reality rather than a science-fiction fantasy.

Some people are utilizing wearable mobile devices to monitor the amount of exercise they take in a day. They then share this data with others in their network or simply store it online with the company who provides the device. Some of these devices are compatible with diet-monitoring apps on phones, adjusting calorie intake based on targets and the amount of exercise. No longer do we need to consult with a dietician to get what was once specialized information. Now our devices can tell us when we have eaten enough, when we need more exercise, and how we are doing compared to our network. We have turned what was once a private struggle to maintain, lose, or gain weight into a competitive activity, a game to be played with those we know and sometimes with those we don’t.

With all this access, constant connectedness, and overwhelming pressure to share everything about our lives, how do we set rules in place that mean we are actually leading a life and not constantly in work mode?

I am not referring here to the creation of a work/life balance: I tackle that topic in the next chapter. What I am referring to is the set of rules you need to create to maintain your individuality and your corporate identity and to establish healthy relationships, both professional and personal. The blurring of these lines is, in my opinion, one of the root causes of so much daily stress: the feeling that one must sacrifice one thing in order to achieve another. How many times have you said or heard said that there just aren’t enough hours in the day?

Economists refer to this as “opportunity cost,” which is the price paid for making a choice between two or more options. That is all well and good in the dry and somewhat esoteric world of finance lecture, but here we are talking about people and their lives. How do we achieve a life in which the price we pay is acceptable to all parties?

There is no truly easy formula for this, and I’m certainly not going to try and convince you otherwise. There are, however, steps that can be taken that I believe will move you closer to achieving this goal. What follows is one of those steps.

These five rules are not some mysterious knowledge being released to you for the first time. Much of it is, as with so much other guidance, common sense. However, although much it is common sense, it seems to escape the common person at the time they most need it, hence the inclusion of these rules in this book.

I have found that having different rule sets for different situations helps me; others find that having one long set of rules works better for them. Whichever camp you fall into, I strongly suggest that you return to this chapter after you have finished the book (or immediately re-read the chapter, if that works for you) and think through your list(s). Don’t believe that you will get around to it at some point. Rule setting is a strong advantage for those working Out of Office, and the sooner you create your rule set, the sooner you will start enjoying this work style even more.

Start with the basics and fill in the blanks as they become apparent. Your rule set should be both a reference and a guide, but it should not be inflexible. Your rules will change over time; they will change to meet new conditions and experiences, just as they do in all aspects of your life. However, creating the rules for how you will be successful in working Out of Office is the first step in actually being successful in this style of work.

If you work for a larger organization, then the belief you are indispensable often comes from a fear of wondering if you will miss out on something major happening in your absence. This feeling can be compounded for those who work Out of Office. Because of the separation between the Out of Office worker and their in-office counterparts the added distance of being incommunicado can lead to an enhanced feeling of isolation. Rather than relaxing during downtime, stress can increase as the mind runs wild with imaginings of organizational changes, promotions, downsizing, lucrative client accounts being swapped, and blame being laid at the door of the absentee.

If you are suffering from these types of worries when you are disconnected from your organization, then I humbly suggest that you might be working for the wrong organization. This type of fear, experienced by many more than would care to admit it, can be soul destroying. I have known several sales-based organizations that deliberately create this type of working environment to keep people “keen.” Of course, that is really a smoke screen for what they are actually doing, which is using up the resource available at the time and replacing it as required with “new blood.”

Now I am not suggesting that everyone who has these feelings is in fact working for the evil empire. For some of us, these fears are borne out of nothing more than half-perceived slights, a lack of sleep, and a desire to truly do the very best job we can—the thought of not being perceived that way can be worrying and cause a downward spiral of similar thoughts.

The rule here is to accept that there is a difference between being a valued employee or vendor and being indispensable—that taking time away from thinking only about your job actually broadens you as a human being and enables you to contribute more to your work life, which in turn makes you more valuable. So rather than you diminishing your value to your organization or clients, taking time away, if used effectively, will actually increase your value.

The Out of Office worker can become the victim of this type of mismanagement simply because they are perceived as being more flexible. They work from home and manage their own time at a level of granularity that is different from their co-workers, so they should be able to cope better with changes and increased demands—so the thinking goes.

Although it may well be true that Out of Office workers are more flexible, it does not follow that they are any more capable of dropping everything and changing course than their in-office counterparts. A routine that has been established, even if it is out of a home-based office, is still a routine, and human beings like routines. One of the themes that came through when talking to people who work Out of Office was the enjoyment of being “left alone,” not in a literal sense necessarily but in the sense that they were not micromanaged. They enjoyed being the masters of their own work day and deciding the work that should be prioritized.

When this ability is taken away from them because of a sudden (and unnecessary) change, which is disguised as a business requirement, it often leads to stress and resentment. After all, this person has proven themselves capable of working remotely and managing their own time and workflow, so why should they respond well to sudden impositions?

Again, I am using an extreme example here to illustrate the point. Not every change of direction or need for someone to work the weekend is simply a power play by some bored executive. In many cases, there is a genuine business need. Take, for example, the situation with Yahoo! and their CEO Marisa Mayer. I have been asked by some people who knew I was writing a book on this topic for my thoughts on her decision to remove Out of Office working from that organization. First of all, I don’t know the full situation at Yahoo!, and, second, I’ve never worked there, so I’m not qualified to make a full assessment. But my feeling was that this was a decision that was made in the best interests of the business and not a knee-jerk reaction because someone didn’t like the thought of people working away from the office. It was a genuine business need as the company underwent restructuring.

So the rule here is to learn to recognize when there are genuine reasons for business needs that require adaptability and learn when to push back and have your own space and time respected. Just because you work Out of Office doesn’t mean you are on call 24/7 (unless that is your job). Sometimes you are going to have to be on a conference call at 3 a.m., and sometimes you might be on a video call at 11 p.m. Those are the requirements of many jobs that have a global slant to them. But you know that going into it. The message here is that Out of Office working doesn’t make you the go-to person for all of those types of situations simply because there is a perception that you work in your pajamas anyway.

Just as it is important for you to set rules to ensure you are not taken advantage of, so too it is important for you to set rules of your own that ensure you don’t take advantage of the situation you find yourself in. As mentioned in previous chapters, self-discipline is one of the biggest requirements for working successfully Out of Office. There are a greater number of temptations in this work style than in any other. It is important to recognize that there is a difference between managing your time and taking advantage of the time you have. I am not a great believer in trading time or tasks for other opportunities; it is just too easy to become indebted to your own schedule—or worse, your organization’s schedule. Of course, it is tempting to go and see a popular movie at an afternoon matinee; after all, you can always work a few hours later in the evening to ensure the work is done. I have a movie theatre across the street from me, literally no more than five minutes from my door. They even serve food at your seat, and the seats are wide and very comfortable. I am also an avid movie-goer. It would be all too easy for me to trade off some tasks and go to the movies in the afternoon. I choose not to do that, not because I am a paragon of virtue but because I set myself rules. Some things are viable trade-offs; for example, getting the grocery shopping done so my girlfriend doesn’t have to do it on her way home from work—that is a valuable trade-off because it means we get more time together in the evenings. I can also do it during my “lunch break.”

In other words, the rule is about not abusing your Out of Office work style. Why is this important? I actually believe it has implications beyond just your own routine, or the impact you might have on the organization you work for. I ride a motorcycle. I often see other motorcyclists weaving in and out of traffic, cutting in front of car drivers and generally abusing the rules of the road. It might be excused as them having some fun. The problem is that the car driver who just had a bike roar past him making them brake suddenly is now going to view all motorcyclists the same way—as a nuisance. That means the next time they ought to yield to a bike, they may choose not to, and that next time it might be me on the bike. The same is true for Out of Office workers who “bend” the rules to suit themselves. They can ruin the opportunity for others who are in the same position. Back to the Yahoo! story: One of the reasons cited in the thinking behind bringing all staff into the office by Marisa Mayer was that some members of staff had set up their own businesses while working Out of Office for Yahoo!. That is definitely more than bending the rules; that is pretty much throwing them out of the window. This is just one example of a few people ruining the experience for many others. Would you want to be the person at your organization that was part of the reason that a sweeping change like this took place? I know I certainly wouldn’t.

The rules and playing by them help establish the trust that is needed by both sides for the Out of Office work style to be successful. Without trust, it is hard to have a successful relationship, personal or professional. Rules help everyone understand the boundaries and establish how trust is earned.

I am not saying that you have to be tied to your desk 9–5 Monday to Friday. Out of Office working comes with flexibility and a reduction in rigidity, but there have to be rules. I personally think it is better to impose rules on yourself than have others impose them on you.

At the end of the day, if you can honestly say you accomplished all that you needed to do, then it was probably a good day and your work rule is operating as it should be, even if you did manage to sneak in a matinee showing of the latest blockbuster!

In Chapter 4, “Working from Home,” I covered the different challenges that working from home can create. As I mentioned there, it is important to have clear boundaries that everyone in the space understands. If you have your own office in a room in the house, treat it like an office—don’t let it also become a junk store or a second play room for the kids. Equally, if your office doubles up as a guest room, think ahead when you know you have guests coming to stay: What will you need to move out of the office so that you can remain productive?

My office is also our guest room; we don’t have a lot of people stay over, but once a year my daughters visit from the UK for at least a week, sometimes longer. That means I have to prepare in advance to make sure that the room is comfortable for them and that I can still be productive during their visit.

Although not ideal, it can be done, but only if you plan ahead and have some rules in place about how the room is treated when it is in use as your office.

The same is true of your time. As I mentioned in Rule Three, setting rules about how you spend your time is important in ensuring that you maintain productivity and effectiveness as an Out of Office worker. But there is more to it than that. Setting rules that your domestic partners understand and that you have effectively communicated reduces friction and ensures that your time is respected—which is why it is important for you to respect your time as well. It really isn’t going to be great if you have a rule in place that says you can’t do grocery shopping on Wednesdays because of your schedule but you decide you can make that matinee showing. There is a conflict in your rules. Make sure your rules make sense to everyone.

Equally, communicate your rule set to those you work with, whether they are coworkers or clients. If you have children and it is your responsibility to pick them up from school at 4 p.m. every day, then make sure that you have communicated to your co-workers and clients that they should not expect you to be on a conference call at that time. If people understand the reason in advance, they are usually a lot more willing to work with the rule than if they are not informed, at least in my experience.

The point here is that you cannot foresee every circumstance. As much as you might plan out your day, week, month, or quarter, there will always be circumstances that you haven’t planned for—surprises, some good, some not so good, that put a twist into your schedule. One of my clients recently had a conference organized for some of their customers. It had taken weeks to plan, everything was in place, vendors were recruited to put on an expo, and speakers were booked; everything, down to the coffee breaks, was mapped out.

Then, just two days before the event, the city in which the conference was to take place was bombed. The city was Boston and the conference had been scheduled to take place at MIT. How do you put in place a rule for that? Simple answer, you don’t.

That is where breaking the rules has an advantage. There are times when going to see that matinee showing can be the best thing you can do for yourself at that time. I’m going to look at self-care in more detail in the next chapter, but self-care is and should be a priority for you. You are not a machine; you are a frail living organism, and you need constant maintenance. The ability to adapt and cope with change is balanced by our need to feel in control.

Sometimes life conspires or at least seems to conspire against us to remove that control. How do you think the event organizer felt when canceling the Boston event? Weeks of preparation had gone into the event but at the same time lives had been lost, families devastated, others seriously injured. On the grand scale of things, did the event really matter? Measured on that scale, of course, it didn’t, but on a smaller scale, on a scale of personal time spent, yes it did. However, no one can share that scale with you. It is your scale against which you measure things. In that situation, how can you possibly share your disappointment at not being able to see something you had planned not come to fruition. If you give voice to your disappointment, then you are likely to be perceived as petty by co-workers and clients alike. But even the most resilient of us would draw a sigh as we canceled something we had spent time and effort on.

So, you need to break the rules from time to time. Maintain your sanity, keep your effectiveness, and break the rules—just do it with a clear conscience.

When you draw up your list of rules—and, yes, I highly recommend making them a physical list—try not to be too loose or too restrictive. Most certainly don’t be too unrealistic. If you know that you are not a morning person, then making a rule that the work day starts at 7 a.m. every day is going to be a rule that is constantly broken—and although I support you breaking rules every now and then, why make a rule that you will be unable to honor?

While being realistic, think about the other restrictions on your time and the obligations you have to others, be they partners, clients, or co-workers. Think about rules that make your relationships with them easier to manage. If they are included in your rule set, they are much more likely to both support the rules that help you most and be more aware of them.

I have rules that I communicate to event organizers when I am being booked as a speaker: They are in my contract. These rules make my life a little easier when I am on the road: They include which airlines I will and will not fly, which hotels I prefer to stay in (not, as you might imagine, the most expensive ones), what time of day and evening I am prepared to fly, and so on. This might look like a diva list to some, but by having a set of rules and clearly communicating them before reaching an agreement, I ensure everyone knows what to expect.

The same is true for Out of Office workers who are employed by organizations and interact with co-workers. Setting rules about when you can and cannot be reasonably expected to be contacted helps a lot with managing expectations. Remember, though, that rules that involve other people are best written as part of a negotiation, not simply handed out as though they were a set of commandments.

As you have probably noticed, a lot of my rules revolve around communication. In my experience, the largest number of issues arise, both in social and professional interactions, when communication breaks down. A lack of understanding, a misreading of intent, or a phrase that is used in an unfamiliar way, can wreak havoc on the best of relationships.

My recommendation is to start with a rule set that covers communication, for both your personal and work relationships, and defines communication styles, methods, and timings. Then work outward from there, creating new rule sets for the individual circumstances you find yourself in.

It may sound somewhat regimented and restrictive to some, but I can assure you that once you have created these rules, you will not regret having done so. You will find that you are more efficient, you can manage expectations better, and those around you have a better understanding of when you are going to be available to them.

The point of setting rules is not to fence you in but to free you. So when you review your rules, try to view them from that perspective. Keep your rules handy; put them somewhere you will see them on a regular basis.

That isn’t to say that they should be so complex that they need to be studied like a law book; however, having reminders is another way to shape your own behavior and that of others. Gently remind people of your rules. I’ve seen people do this in all kinds of ways, including one of my favorites: via the signature block of their email. This can be a simple note mentioning your availability that week or a reminder to clients that invoices are due on a particular date.

The rules don’t have to be trumpeted from the rooftops, and I will reiterate again: Don’t be rigid about them. Gentle reminders go a long way to sustaining the practice of rule setting. If either side abandons the rules, there was no real point in creating them in the first place.

So grab a notebook and pen and start your list of rules. The sooner you start, the easier it will be. Ask your co-workers, clients, and partners to help you construct a realistic and achievable set of rules. Encourage them to write their own set of rules so that you can respect their time and work more fully.