Why Does Work & Personal Split Exist?
No, seriously, why do we tend to split our lives in two?
I can certainly identify myself as a standalone creature (stand alone, see?), I was born as a separate person, and in many-many years I will die as a separate person — also alone.
So there is no doubt that I have One Life between those two key milestones, unstoppably flowing from A to B.
And the situation is probably the same for the rest of the people on this planet.
But when it comes to accomplishments, results, and getting things done — we tend to compartmentalize our experiences. We start to talk about our Work life, our Personal Life, and the balance between them.
Our File Managers, Tasks, and Note applications start to have “Work” and “Personal” folders proudly standing separately from each other.
This begs the question: why do we need to separate our lives into these two distinct categories when they are part of a single, continuous whole?
Why are we not having the “Me” and “Other World” categories pair? Those are pretty distinct, aren’t they? Or “Money Spending” and “Money Earning” two significant life areas?
It’s almost always Work and Personal…
The answer again resides in our Goals
First of all, I have to make a remark, and mention my other article on “Prouductivity” — feel free to refer to it, but in short:
Goals are our compass. They structure things. They filter out irrelevant.
To me it sounds like the answer, guys.
When we work for some company, we work for someone’s company. This company was started as a realization of Somebody’s dream and vision. This Guy (or a Team) is big enough to charm other people with their vision and fund these people’s lives through the value their company produces.
So when you work for someone, you are a part of someone’s dream. You execute someone’s vision into reality, and you achieve someone’s goals.
But they are not necessarily yours.
On the other hand, while you devote a big part of your Life to Someone, there is still something left that is just Yours, that belongs only to You. Something that is filled by Your vision. Follows Your Dream. Consists of Your Goals.
That’s precisely what the “Personal” bucket usually means. If we are devoted to someone significantly, our Personal bucket contents are something like Family, Hobbies, Travel, and maybe a couple of other routine things.
If you look at Creators and Entrepreneurs, you’ll see they don’t usually have to mix Work and Personal. They think “Projects”; they have Areas of Influence or Areas of Focus; they have Resources to arm them for their dreams. When you are clear about your goals, your logic is streamlined around your personal Goals and what is needed to accomplish them.
That is why the PARA framework can work well for Creators or someone running his own business, but I can hardly see it working for Company Employees. For some it might be too hard to seamlessly blend someone’s goals with Yours and successfully keep track of them in one unified fashion.
Is it bad? Absolutely not.
It’s probably about attaching your goals to the Organization’s goals as closely as possible. Or, I better say,
It’s about finding in the Organization’s goals those closest to yours, those matching your mission and values.
That way, all your efforts and achievements will be Yours Truly, not just what your boss told you to do. This is a whole different level of experiencing your professional part of Life and, consequently, the quality of your results.
A bit more thoughts on the Goals overall and how to make sure you chase the right ones are in this article:
