Slim Shady is Firm with Work Boundaries

In 2006, music artist Akon, had a studio recording session with Platinum recording artist, Eminem, that would teach his mind about working in music forever. When I think of meticulous work schedules, those in the creative arts don’t come to the forefront of my mind. Apparently, they don’t come to the forefront of Akon’s mind, either. 

Assuming he was able to roll into the studio for a late session, start the creative process, and see where the evening’s recording went, Akon was surprised to find out that Eminem had left earlier in the afternoon promptly at 5pm. When he called Eminem to see where he went and if he’d come back, Eminem said, “I’ll be back tomorrow at nine.” Not only that, the next day Eminem came right at nine and while in the middle of his session he took a sixty minute lunch break at 1pm. Just as they were finishing their track, Eminem stood up right at 5pm, short of finishing the song, and left. 

This hip hop legend had turned a unique, creative, boundaryless profession into a nine to five profession. Astonishing!

You see, work life has evolved far away from the blowing factory whistle and punching time cards. Moving away from archaic work structures is only expedited by technology, too, isn’t it?

Your email is in your pocket. It’s not uncommon to receive Slack notifications two hours before you get to the office or to share files on DropBox while you eat dinner with your family in 2020. Furthermore, quarantine and its nearly universal work-from-home essence has all but obliterated the boundaries between working hours and non-work hours. 

Since the boundaries aren’t built for you, it seems that we can take a page out of Eminem’s book to build in the boundaries that serve us manually ourselves. If Eminem can defend his hard stops with work, I’m sure you can, too.