This post also appears today on my new blog Tech Rest
How to manage home while you're at work and work while you're at home.
One of the fundamental keys to Getting Things Done is to capture your thoughts and put them into a trusted system. In addition, its good practice to sort those thoughts and todos based on "context" (work, home, etc.). The problem becomes how to deal with things when you are "out of context". When I'm at work I don't want to take time away from work for freelancing. On the other hand, I know that not putting those thoughts down causes stress. Some of my strategies for dealing with this tension are shown below.
Bookmarks. I follow around 70 blogs on a daily basis. All my blogs are in Google Reader. Some of the blogs are work related and some are not. When I'm at work sometimes I see a post that I would like to read at home (and vice versa). The solution for me has been creating a Bookmark folder called @ACTION with two sub-folders called @WORK and @HOME. So when I'm at work and see a home related post, I bookmark it in the @HOME folder. That way, I get the post off my mind and I can take a look at later it in the right context. What makes this work is Google Browser Sync for Firefox. With it, changes I make in Firefox (see link in sidebar) at either location sync with the other.
Blackberry. My works provides me with a Blackberry. When I'm at home and think of something I need to do at work, I create a task on my Blackberry. Works great. Also, while I'm at home, I turn off all notifications except the phone. This helps me not be interrupted at supper by some message like, "we are going to be doing maintenance on the voice mail server".
Google Docs and Spreadsheets. I get some of my best blogging done from work when I'm not "on the clock". Docs allows me to draft a post from where ever I have an internet connection. Then when I get home, I copy and paste from Docs into Word 2007 (Microsoft Word Home and Student 2007
) that I use to post.
Jott (Jott.com) . When I'm on the way to a meeting at work and I think of something I need to do at home, I use jott. Then when I get home, the message is in my home email. I have it set up so that when it says "Who do you want to jott?" I can say home, work, or Debbie and the emails are routed to home, work, or my wife respectively.
You've got two choices:
Establish a system that allows you to live with your two (or more) brains.
Bear the stress of thinking about work while you're at home or thinking about home while you're at home.
So how do you handle this?
See also:
