The most asked question at my personal planning workshops is asked because people are not only challenged by business work schedules, but by kids at home, outside appointments, and life events. The question is if they should integrate or separate their personal and work personal planning.  

The answer is usually to integrate your planning. Focus and attention is required to maintain one set of weekly plans, project to-do lists, tickler files, and project lists. The effort to keep one set of these for work and another for home is enough to make both sets ineffective.

Think of how you use your appointment book. While there may be a few people who keep a separate calendar for work and home, they are in the minority. Having two appointment books requires checking both books in order to schedule many appointments… so integrating work and home in one appointment book is the norm.  Having two sets of plans to keep track of the 75 to 100 multi-step projects that most people have active between work and home makes even less sense than having two appointment books.

A caveat concerning what you put in Outlook or Notes at work. Most business’s policies state that they have the right to read your email and I would take that to include your electronic calendar. A possible workaround is to write personal entries cryptically.

For a long time we have all read about the importance of separating work and home life. The fact is that driving a wedge between the two hardly ever works. The better approach is to integrate the two into one life plan that allows balancing the two with the needs of both in full view.

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