Partitioning work and non-work

Hello and welcome to the traveling introvert, today, I want to talk about separation of business and personal, and I want to come around to it from a tech point of view. So I was remembering the days when I used to go to work at a desktop computer, do the work, finish the work, go home, go about my life. And then SARS happened and I had to bring my desktop computer home. So at work, my desktop computer, I had my own personal laptop.

 

So I do the work finished on that. I put my laptop.

 

Never the twain should meet. Let's go forward another few years, then I have a work laptop and a home laptop, and again, I would do my work on my work laptop and I would do non-work stuff on my home laptop. Never the twain should meet somewhere along the line that got blurred. I started my own business and then I had one laptop and that one laptop did business and personal. And it happened so gradually that you don't even realize that it's a problem.

 

And that's how the line between personal and business gets really blurred, especially now using this one particular laptop for everything. So one thing that I've been told can be useful I'm actually going to try it is to have separate user logins for my laptop. So one user will be all business, the suit and the tie. It will have all my logins, my last pass, access to whatever it is I need all the software installed a certain desktop image all that good stuff.

 

And then another user on the same laptop, but with a different desktop, maybe beach or traveling or, you know, whatever latest book that I want to read. And it could have like my gaming accounts and access to my gaming accounts, because then what I could do on my business side is to block certain websites. So there's websites that I probably shouldn't be looking at, or rabbit holes that I shouldn't be going down while I'm working so I could block that access, but then have that access on my other user account to try and get that separation between work and non-work, especially just for like personal learning or watching YouTube videos.

 

Because I have access to a lot of different accounts in general because of my work and the work that I do for my clients. So making sure that I'm not accidentally watching a certain video on my clients like YouTube channel because I was working on it during the day and then in the evening I just went and looked at YouTube. This is a really easy way of keeping that line of delineation. And I've heard about this from a I was gonna say fellow podcasting and I was like, I don't know the person, but technically they have podcasts, content creators.

 

They are fellow podcasts. And I think it makes a very valid point. Demarcating the difference between personal and business is, I think, good for mental health gives you more space. And you you feel that break, OK I'm not working anymore because even though I might not look at my business email, I know it's there. I can access it at the click. And yes, a user isn't quite as good. Obviously, I would love a separate laptop, but not on the cards.

 

Right now, though, what I could do in time is what I do like to do is to buy a laptop, a new laptop before my old one dies. And I some people like to wait until their actual laptop dies and then panic and buy a new one. But I you know, you see the warning signs. It's been three to five years , probably starting to run a little slower. So maybe at that point what I would do is make one laptop, a work laptop, the brand new one, and the fresh install and the fun stuff, and then keep my old laptop just for fun.

 

That is something that I'm also thinking about doing after I get through a couple of financial stuff that I think is a good idea.

 

So moving forward, I'd love to know what you do to delineate or stop, you know, the bleed between work life and non-work life. Any tips, any hints, anything you want to try, anything you've heard about to try, any experiments? Because I think it's it's hugely important and it's an area we forget about. Like with your phone, my  phone specifically. I know with Android I have the option of having a work profile and a non profile, and I use them very, very separately on purpose on my phone.

 

Why don't do that on my computer. I don't know. This is just a little light bulb moment that I wanted to share with you all. So thank you for listening. If you have any questions, please email me at Janice@thecareerintrovert.com. Have a great rest of your week and thanks for listening.