Opinion: Taking Your Work Personally

(Sept. 8) -- Work-life balance is a hot topic. People often ask me questions about how to define the boundaries between business and personal commitments. Should I include the personal things with the business stuff on my "projects" lists? Should I have "reorganize the garden area" on the same list as "reorganize my department"?

The answer is that it depends on the purpose of your list.

But if you have the same reason for lists that I do -- to get everything off your mind, except whatever you're currently doing, as quickly and easily as possible -- then having everything, whether you'd consider it "personal" or "business," in as few places as possible is the most efficient. If you split personal and professional, it's just going to take you that much more effort and time to review all the lists to get them off your mind.

People often react to this as if they're looking at something weird when they see it all together. Perhaps it's really the bigger question -- you mean it's OK to focus with as much rigor and integrity on my personal life as on my professional stuff? Perhaps it's the feeling people have sometimes expressed that handling the business of life in a businesslike way seems somehow cold, sterile and mechanical.

My retort to all that is that you're the one who's weird in thinking "work" and "personal" are different things. In the history of the planet, only in the last dozen decades have people assumed these were different, and I don't imagine that farmers or most craftspeople ever have. Frankly, splitting them apart seems cold and mechanical to me.

Much of our culture seems to live with the principle of "you don't bring work home." We don't want the problems that plague us in one arena to disturb another. I've had relatives whose families truly never knew exactly what they did at work -- it was just a tacit assumption that those were different and parallel universes that hardly ever intersected.

In simpler worlds than I'm accustomed to, I can see the value of that separation. We don't want to burden others unnecessarily with our distractions, or to have them undermine other important areas of responsibility. Also, we need to unhook and shift our focus regularly from anything we're engaged in, to keep our perspective fresh. But for most of the people reading this post, to over-compartmentalize your world may add to stress and distraction, not relieve it.

Consider these comments from a division president of a Fortune 50 corporation in which we recently piloted our Getting Things Done seminar:

"Instead of trying to compartmentalize your kids, your home, your spouse, your work, your nonprofit life, the other parts of your life ... to be able to integrate it all into one piece. I don't know that in our culture there's ever been permission to do that! We tend to compartmentalize everything about work here. And it's very freeing to put it all together. I think that's a real key. It's like permission to say, 'Hey, we live one big, messy life!' "

Along that line, there is a trend to make your home office your main office. For sole-contributor businesses and small-business entrepreneurs that's already normal, but it's becoming more common for the corporate types to make their "office office" their satellite while controlling the main part of their life and work from home.

I've worked with several successful corporate professionals who, when they bought their big house in the 'burbs, turned the living room into their office. Many people never live in the formal living room/dining room area anyway. Their "living" rooms are actually their kitchens and dens. The original living/dining room had the best light for daytime working, the best shelves for their library and was close enough to the refrigerator for midwork coffee and snacking.

I'm not saying right or wrong -- just that it's the trend, and I think there's a message there.

If you have divided your life into "work" and "personal" because you don't want to be distracted by one while you're in the other, consider this: While you're doing anything, you shouldn't be distracted by anything else.

You are at your best when you only focus on one thing at a time, and the most effective personal system is one that facilitates that focus. Your whole life is your work, and to assume anything less may constrain your perspective and therefore your performance. At any moment you want to be able to put it all to rest. All.

As James Fenimore Cooper put it: "The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world."

David Allen was named one of the top five executive coaches in the world by Forbes, and Fast Company called him "one of the world's most influential thinkers" in the arena of personal productivity. His book, "Getting Things Done," is an international best seller. Find out more about David and his books on Red Room.