“We’re told to take care of ourselves, but rewarded for burning out quietly. That’s not a culture of wellbeing. That’s a contradiction we’ve normalized.”
— Nabeela Elsayed
When I started at IKEA, I didn’t know how to log off.
I had come from a traditional American corporate culture where success was synonymous with self-sacrifice. First one in. Last one out. Inbox always open. Vacation days unused.
So when I entered a workplace where leaders openly took four-week holidays and didn’t check in once, I felt a strange kind of whiplash. Was this real? Was this safe?
At first, I didn’t trust it. I stuck to my old rhythm. One week off, maybe ten days. It wasn’t until my fourth year that I gave myself permission to take a whole month off.
IKEA had created the conditions for boundaries to be respected, even rewarded. But unlearning the internalized rules of overwork took years. This is an essential lesson to all of the people out there who think that changing companies or industries is the solution to their overworking tendencies- believe me when I tell you that it can be a good step if you're in the wrong place, but it is by no means the way out of the burnout loop.
Because for many of us, the real tension isn’t between us and our company. It’s between the life we want to live and the person we’ve been trained to be.
The Mixed Signals of Modern Work
The science supporting the detrimental effects of overwork is undisputed; check out my article “Your Brain on 55 Hours of Work” if you missed it. And every company out there wants to espouse caring about its people- we would all be rich if we had a dollar for every time sone said we are in the “people business” yet people are still struggling and one of the biggest struggles that exists is around how to establish healthy boundaries around our work. There are many reasons for this, but I will distill it down to the top three:
1. Technology - we are addicted to our phones, emails, and hitting the refresh button; clicking the arrow is like a tic.
2. Society, both inside and outside of organizations, continues to glorify and reward overwork.
3. We have conditioned ourselves to be like this, and most people don't go deep enough to question the belief systems that make them addicted to success, achievement, and work.
As I continue to coach high achievers and leaders, one thing that consistently emerges is a need for clarity around boundary setting: I commonly get questions like:
“How do I navigate setting boundaries?”
“ What if my leader doesn’t respect my boundaries?”
“ What if I work in a company that glorifies toxic productivity?”
“What if people talk about boundaries, but I don’t see anyone role modelling them?”
And as much as I would love to give people a simple answer to these questions, like most things in life, the answer is often, it depends.
Because we live in a world of tensions, and that tension also exists around boundaries.
Even the research disagrees on how setting boundaries at work can affect your career.
On one hand, a study published in Harvard Business Review found that employees who took all of their vacation days were actually 6.5% more likely to get promoted. Time off was linked to happiness, and managers associated happiness with performance and promotability.
On the other hand, a recent study from Hong Kong and IE Business School found the opposite: employees who visibly detach from work by taking vacations, setting out-of-office replies, or refusing after-hours emails are often penalized. The researchers referred to this as the Detachment Paradox: leaders are aware that rest improves performance, yet they still penalize those who pursue it.
The result? A kind of workplace gaslighting. We’re told to take care of ourselves, but are rewarded for burning out quietly.
Why Leaders Talk About Boundaries But Still Penalize Them
It’s tempting to label this as hypocrisy. But there’s a deeper cultural story at play, which sociologist Mary Blair-Loy calls the Work Devotion Schema.
This schema defines the “ideal worker” as someone who exhibits total allegiance to their job:
They work nights and weekends without complaint.
They answer emails immediately, even on vacation.
They never let personal obligations get in the way of professional ones
This ideal is deeply embedded in many organizational cultures. It’s the legacy code of hustle culture and success, defined by relentless availability, where one gives everything to their profession, passion, and ambition.
And despite the discussion about well-being, the ideal worker who sacrifices everything for the company still prevails. Leaders may promote wellness, but they’re often trapped by the same invisible standards. They know that rest is productive, but struggle to model it. They don’t model it because they are themselves held hostage by the ideal worker schema. Because in the subconscious playbook of professional identity, boundaries still signal disloyalty.
Until that schema is rewritten, we will continue to live in this contradiction.
Culture Isn’t a Policy. It’s a Pattern.
So what can you do?
Before deciding whether to be quiet or vocal about your boundaries, the first thing you need to determine is: What kind of culture am I working in?
In her book Never Not Working, Malissa Clark provides a simple but powerful tool to help decode your organization’s relationship to work.
She advises taking an audit and heeding the visible cues an organization sends. These clues include physical artifacts, such as the words on the walls, posters, and the culture and values, as well as the norms and rituals, which are the behaviours that are observed, and what gets rewarded. Paying attention to these organizational cues allows you to assess if you’re in a workaholic culture. These clues, the physical artifacts, norms, rituals and rewards, reveal what your organization really values. They help you understand whether your culture still worships the ideal worker, or is trying to make space for real, human lives.
The Boundary Culture Spectrum
Over time, I’ve also come to see that most organizations fall into one of three categories:
1. The Burnout Factory
Boundaries are ignored or punished. Overwork is the norm, and detachment is interpreted as a lack of commitment which makes boundary setting a high career risk.
2. The Hustle and Holiday Culture
Hustle is real, but rest is tolerated if you communicate it carefully. These cultures are either in transition or toggling between an ambition to promote a wellness culture, but have yet to operationalize it or make it the cultural norm. In these types of organizations, whether or not boundary setting is a career risk largely depends on your leader.
3. The Rest is Wisdom Organization
Boundaries are expected, and the rest is seen as a leadership strength. These companies have decoupled hustle from value, and as a result, boundary setting is low risk.
IKEA, for me, was a rest is wisdom environment. But even in that context, I had to dismantle years of internalized programming. The real work wasn’t taking the time off. It was permitting myself to do it.
Now, one additional warning to those of us who struggle with overwork - I still burned myself out even though I was working in a Rest is Wisdom Organization. And that is because I was able to differentiate myself as the “ideal worker more easily,” my over-achieving workaholic tendencies allowed me to do multiple jobs at once, work on overdrive and artfully hide the implications on my personal wellbeing and life. It's once again a personal warning that the type of organization you are in is only one piece of this complex relationship we have with work and achievement.
So… Should You Be Loud About Your Boundaries?
Here’s my “it depends” framework for you to use:
Observe the cues.
What gets rewarded? What do leaders model? What’s considered heroic behavior?
Do a State of the Union: Is Your Organization Operating Under the Ideal Worker Schema? Or is it moving toward a new definition of leadership, sustainability or success?
Be intentional about your approach: If you’re in a hustle-holiday or rest-is-wisdom culture, speak up. Set the tone. Normalize your boundaries. If you’re in a burnout factory, you might choose to stay for a period of time and be strategic and quiet about your boundaries, but don’t abandon them altogether.
Final Thought: Success Requires a Reckoning
It took me four years at IKEA before I allowed myself to use all my paid time off.
Not because I lacked support. But because I was still running on an outdated script, one that told me rest was risky, and overwork was how I earned my place.
And here's what I’ve learned: even in a culture that celebrates boundaries, you can still burn out if your identity is wrapped up in being indispensable.
Because boundaries are not just about workload. They’re about worthiness. About untangling who you are from what you produce. About believing that your value doesn’t disappear when your out-of-office turns on.
So before you decide whether to whisper or declare your boundaries, ask yourself a deeper question:
What are you sacrificing by not setting boundaries? What will happen in one year, three years or five years if you continue to make those sacrifices? If you zoom out, are the sacrifices worth it?
Because this isn’t just about managing hours, it’s about rewriting the code that defines who gets to thrive and what thriving even means.
You don’t need to earn your rest with exhaustion.
You don’t need to prove your worth by running yourself empty.
The future of leadership isn’t built on a blind devotion to work. It’s built on devotion to building a multi-dimensional life for yourself and the lives of those you lead.
And if your boundaries threaten your promotability, then it’s not your boundaries that need to change; it’s the definition of success and leadership that needs to change.
Until next time, take care of yourself and those around you.
In Partnership,
Nabeela
If you made it to the end, you’ve got range.
For more content on redefining leadership and getting off the the burnout loop, you can:
👉 Follow me on LinkedIn, YouTube or Instagram
🎙️ Listen to the article on the Substack or wherever you get your podcast: Re-Imagine Success Podcast
📨 Or just forward this to a colleague who needs a little perspective (and maybe a little permission to let go of the balancing act).
Want to learn more?
If you would like to learn more about the world's unhealthy relationship with work, success, and achievement and discover ways to escape the burnout loop, check out some of my most popular posts below:
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