Manage Personal *and* Professional in same system?

[enyonam]

I have tried it both ways... several times ... and ended up with it combined. There are two main reasons.

1. My personal and professional lives are intertwined and there were too many spots where it became confusing whether it sat in my personal system or professional system.

2. I do not have any qualms about storing my system on my work system. I chose my work system because most things come in, especially electronically via email or project management tools, at work. So it was just more efficient.

It would be nice to have a separate lists and 'shut off' work by closing my professional system and opening my personal system but it simply is not that simple for my work-life. So I have one single system for everything, and I've found other ways to transition for work to personal life, and back.

[chrisemersonnc]

Wow - a lot of very helpful input. Thanks everyone! After reading everyone's input it sounds like it's a situation decision based on your work/life setup. I work for a somewhat smaller company and like some who've replied I don't necessary separate my work/home life in a traditional sense - so I'm guessing I'll be trying a "one system for all" approach first.

To some of the folks who asked about my office PM situation, sadly no our company doesn't employ and GTD methods yet and our PM system does not handle "next actions" very well either. The project tasks are usually very generic/abstract and would need to be broken into smaller sub-tasks to truly be considered "next actions". So while there may be some duplicate entry on my part, I try to just manage the "next actions" with my GTD system and let the company's PM system handle the larger project framework.

Thank you all again for all the advice! Really appreciate it!

[Cpu_Modern]

So while there may be some duplicate entry on my part, I try to just manage the "next actions" with my GTD system and let the company's PM system handle the larger project framework.!

This sounds like a good compromise. The criteria to judge 'good' or 'not good' in this case is for me the question: does it facilitate the path to mind like water? And I think yes it does (of course my insight onto the situation is very limited). The companies project plan would than be 'half' the projects list. Make sure to save a copy if you trusted on the riability of the plan, so to have proof (if not in an argument with the people you work with, then for you to make your system more / absolutely trustworthy).