5 Boundaries That Protect You When Quitting Isn't an Option
Every week, another company announces layoffs. You watch the headline, you watch your Slack, and you wait to see whose announcement you’re going to see next on LinkedIn. After 11 years at Salesforce, I too was part of the statistics when I was laid off this past February.
But this piece isn't about those who got the dreaded meeting on their calendar or impersonal email in their inbox. It's about the ones who didn't.
I've talked to a lot of people over the last few months who fall into this category, several of them my own clients. They’ve kept their jobs and they’re technically "safe." But some of them have told me honestly that part of them almost wishes it had been them too.
I’m not entirely surprised because that’s what happens when you're doing the job of two or three people, absorbing responsibilities that used to belong to someone else's now-eliminated role, and getting nothing in return except "this is just how it is right now." You also keep hearing 'we'll revisit your promotion next cycle,' only to watch it come and go again, until you've stopped believing it at all. And somewhere in the middle of dealing with all of this, your body has been keeping score. Hair loss, insomnia, heart palpitations that lead to an ER visit.
I'm not exaggerating any of this. I know people living through this right now. You might be one of them.
The Myth of ‘Safety’
Here’s what I’ve come to know, especially this last year - doing more, giving more, and proving your value harder than anyone else on your team does not make you safe. I've watched high performers get laid off right alongside everyone else, sometimes because of a decision that had nothing to do with their output at all. The idea that hard work is protection is a story that keeps people overworking for a guarantee that was likely never there.
Yet, most people in this position stay, not because they haven't noticed what it’s doing to them, but because right now, trying to make a change feels riskier than staying put. The job market doesn't reward risk the way it used to, and so people think, keep going, keep your head down, keep hoping the next quarter is different.
I understand that completely. I'm not trying to tell you to quit your job tomorrow. What I want to offer instead is something smaller but actionable - a few boundaries you can start setting in the job you have, without waiting for permission or for the market to shift in your favor.
Block an hour a day that belongs to you, not your job.
Put it on your calendar like it's a meeting, because it is. A walk, a workout, twenty minutes of doing absolutely nothing that produces value for anyone else but you. Treat it the way you'd treat a call with your manager. If you wouldn't cancel that, don't cancel this either.
Don't check email before work is supposed to start.
Checking the moment you wake up means your day starts on someone else's terms before you've had a chance to set your own. Give yourself the time between waking up and starting work, even if it's fifteen minutes. That time belongs to you.
Set the boundary on when you're reachable - and then actually maintain it.
Put up the away message on Slack/Teams that says when you'll be back. Log off at 5pm and stay off. No reopening the laptop after dinner to "just check one thing." The message only works if your behavior backs it up. The moment people learn you'll respond anyway, the away message stops being a boundary and becomes nothing more than a distraction.
Audit your recurring meetings once a month.
If your presence isn't required for a decision to get made, decline it and ask for the recap instead. Meetings are usually the first thing that multiplies when a role absorbs someone else's workload, and they're one of the easiest things to reclaim because you probably didn't need to be in most of them anyway.
When you're asked to take on more, know when to push back.
Say something like, "I can only take this on if something comes off my plate. I'm at max capacity." This is the hardest one, I know, but it's the one that actually interrupts the pattern. It puts the tradeoff back where it belongs - on the person handing you the work - instead of leaving you to silently absorb it and figure out what it costs you on your own time.
None of these five things are going to fix a broken system. They won't get you the promotion that keeps getting pushed to the next cycle, and they won't make your workload disappear, either. What they will do is stop you from disappearing into the job entirely, one unpaid hour and one skipped boundary at a time.
Know your worth and own it. Your health and sanity depend on it.