Some links here earn me a small commission, at no cost to you.
I run a small SEO and digital marketing studio. For the first three years I worked until whenever, and the work expanded to fill it exactly as everyone warns you. Here is what actually changed it, and what didn’t.
What held
A hard stop with something after it. Six o’clock on its own is a suggestion. Six o’clock with a pottery class, a walk with the dogs, or a plant that needs repotting is a deadline. The evening has to contain something, or work will take it.
Telling clients the hours, once, at the start. Not apologising for them later. In four years exactly two people have had a problem with it, and one of them was a problem in other ways.
A Friday page. I keep a paper planner and Friday’s page is where I write what I am not doing next week. It’s the only planning habit I’ve kept for more than a month.
A signal. I light a candle when the laptop closes. It’s a bit silly and it works completely — the flat changes mode and so do I.
What didn’t
App blockers. I know all the passwords. I lasted nine days.
“No email after six.” Meaningless, because the problem was never reading the email, it was answering it. I now read it and answer in the morning, and nothing has ever caught fire.
A separate work phone. Two phones in one bag is just one phone with extra steps.
Trying to do it silently. For a year I kept boundaries without telling anyone, then got quietly resentful when people didn’t guess. Saying it out loud is the whole trick.
The part that’s still hard
Launch weeks. When a client site goes live, the six o’clock thing goes out the window and I make my peace with that — three or four weeks a year. What I try to protect is the week after: no new work starts, and I get the evenings back.
Why I write this down
Mostly so I remember why. It took about two years to get here and it would take about two weeks to lose, and every time I write one of these posts I end up correcting something in my own week.
← Back to the journal