Setting Boundaries for Your Small Business

Staying organized with your time, personal life, and business is about setting boundaries.

How you organize your time, work space, and personal life are key ingredients to your small business’s success.

How successful you are in your chosen workspace depends on how well you’re able to set boundaries around your work life. If you previously worked for someone else, most of your working life was probably decided for you—what time to start work, where to sit, how your day is structured, and much more. When you work for yourself, it can feel liberating to set all of your rules—but rules are, nevertheless, still necessary.

Setting some basic boundaries around your work life will help your define your business. This is especially true if you work at home. Consider the following:

Space

  • How will you set up your desk?
  • If you work from home, how will you define your work area?
  • What supplies do you need regularly, and how will you order them?

Time

  • What are your work hours and days going to be?
  • Are you going to work evenings or weekends?
  • How much work do you want to take home with you?

Interruptions

  • How will you deal with your kids wanting to play when you have an important project?
  • Will you take personal phone calls during your work day?

Remember, it’s your business—you get to define how you want it to work. Think about what worked (and what didn’t) at your last job, and use that as a starting point for how you’d like your business to be set up.

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