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Work relationships are weird; you are supposed to spend more conscious time a day with your coworkers than your family, and humans are social creatures, so we naturally form groups, friendships, etc. Trying to figure out how to establish boundaries around that is hard. https://twitter.com/xavierck3d/status/1275597250991816704
One thing I've tried to do better lately over the past few years is set up clear boundaries: these are my work hours, I will not work beyond this. The work gets _done_. That's what's important. Lay out what tasks need getting done and do those tasks.
I want to be friends with everyone I work with; I want to build teams, I look at famous artists I look up to and see how the best ones had strong, long-lasting friendships with frequent collaborators. But not everyone sees it that way. So boundaries are good.
Working remotely can make this hard; setting up boundaries for when you will/will not answer phone and discord messages is crucial.
But unlike a family once you've moved out and everyone is an adult living their own lives, there are genuine power dynamics at play in a workplace. So a workplace can never be a family. Friends, maybe. But the bigger a company gets, the less personal.
One reason I like being one of the cofounders of Mischief is that I don't have to worry about a boss getting mad at me if I reassert the boundaries we've set. Since I'm high up the food chain, I can say "we don't work beyond this" and I can help make sure others do the same.
If we get large enough and I get my way, I want to push for a 30-35 hour work week, full remote support, stuff like that. Would love to eventually look into healthy workplaces and see what goes into making them good and try to institute policies to support that.
But, getting back to that initial tweet: it's natural for most people to spend a lot of time with other people and see those relationships as being meaningful. To want something from that. But... the problem is, there are people who will take advantage of closeness.
So you gotta have boundaries, even if it seems hard to know where to say "no, I won't do that." A part of you _wants_ to lay your life down for the team. Your life is never worth less than the team's.
There are people who will see "setting boundaries to keep yourself from dying" as "disloyalty." These are people who need to learn what boundaries are and why they exist. If possible, help those around you establish their own boundaries, if they want your help.
I remember people having this mentality even in retail and it's like, look, $7.25 is not enough for me to deal with constant screaming karens who are mad about office supplies and their inability to return used ink cartridges. My loyalty is worth at least $200k a year, sorry.
Your health lets you work better. People who think short term won't see that. They want you to grind yourself to dust. I already tried that. I had like 96% efficiency at the Post Office plant I worked at, and they fired me... because I didn't join the union.
(literally like top 5 workers out of over a thousand, but they advertised the union as existing to provide childcare, and not having a child, I did not see a reason to join; my contract was not renewed because of this)
