Get Everything Done

Just finished Do it Tomorrow and have been in the process of implementing its principles this past month. So far so good. I am a minister who works from home most of the time (I have no office) and lead meetings and planning sessions at the church, at someone else's home or at my own place. I have many personal projects as well as work-related (ministry) projects.

My question is: do people keep 2 lists. One list as work and another personal with clear guidelines each day of when they are allowed to work on personal and when they can work on work related?

Thanks

I think the right place to decide "how much work do I have to work" is on the commitments level. How much work-projects have you anyway? Enough? Or to much? If you get this number right, it wont matter how much you work on them for a given day. As long as you finish them fast enough on an overall scale.

Thanks for the input. I have decided just to keep one list but have a cut off point each day where "work" related items need to be done. The rest of the day will be for personal spotaneous projects, family and friends, and what not.

In my planner book, I list my office work from the top down, and my personal tasks from the bottom up (no more than 2 or 3). They rarely meet in the middle.

I also have a current initiative for work and a CI for home (usually related to homework, as I'm taking graduate school classes at the moment).

I keep a sort of master personal task list in Excel on my home PC; I will dip into that for weekly non-school stuff I need or want to do.

For me it's important to keep separate work and personal lists.

Influenced by DIT, I have much cut back on my committments, reducing my work to four broad themes and my personal life to another four. If an initiative doesn't fit in one of the eight areas, it doesn't get taken on.

Even so, I'm still a bit overcommitted, and if I let them, the work obligations would expand to fill all the hours in the day and displace the personal things. Tracking the personal things separately is necessary to ensure that the are given the necessary amount of attention.

Maybe if one achieves Mark's ideal, choosing from the menu of life only the items one can actually comfortably consume, the need for two lists will disappear.