The Productive Pessimist

There's a lot of talk these days about "boundaries".  Every other social media post tells you that "boundaries are important."  Half of the rest of the social media posts mock the entire idea of boundaries, and insist it's all part of the "woke agenda". But what are  boundaries, and how do you hold them whilst still enabling people, including the strangers who may become your collaborators, your team members, or your customers/clients, to approach you freely? What are boundaries? A boundary, in human psycho-social terms, is a requirement you have around the way people behave and interact with you.  It needs  to be expressed, because expected people to "just know" what your boundaries are is unreasonable; people aren't psychic. Many open-access spaces include signage about zero tolerance of verbally or physically abusive behaviour towards their staff - that's a poorly stated  boundary, because everyone's idea, particularly of v...

  "Mental health at work" has become something of a buzz phrase in recent years, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. "Mental health" is the reason people "need to get back to the office" - because the extroverts are suffering, since they're no longer able to dominate meetings, talk people into agreeing to take on more work than they're actually comfortable with, or enthusiastically create a situation where, if getting drunk with people you already spend too much time with, or leaping on a zip wire, aren't really your thing, you're "unadventurous", "anti-social", and "not really a team player." The UK government insist work is good  for our "mental health", even as successful GPs decide they literally can't carry on anymore, and choose a permanent solution to the problem of burnout.  While the low wages, in comparison to the cost of living, and long hours of many jobs are actually c...