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Splitting your trusted system

I've just gone from being self-employed to a regular full-time job. Lots of culture shock, of course, but the thing that is really stumping me is this. When I was self-employed, I kept all my projects, contexts, and actions in one trusted system --- Emacs Org-mode. This worked really well, and I was able to keep a full view of all the commitments in my life in front of me.

My problem is that now I feel the need to split my system between work and everything else (home, hobbies, volunteering), because my computer at work, and everything on it, is the property of my employer and subject to monitoring, seizure, backups, folding, spindling, mutilating, etc. I have set up a work GTD system using Org mode as well (previously Monkey-GTD, but it didn't meet all of my needs).

This system works well for tracking my work needs, but because I am at home so little (relatively speaking) now, I find that I do not check and update my home GTD system frequently enough to keep on top of my non-work commitments. Obviously, one needs only one trusted system, not a collection of them, which is my problem.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem. How do other people deal with having to split their trusted system?

neo's picture

Another option similar to the...

ErikSamuelson;6225 wrote:
Another option similar to the flash drive (though very un-hipster high tech) would be to get a cheap PDA and keep your lists sync-ed (not sure if your program would sync--could sync docs or textfiles with a program such as Documents to Go). That way, you could look at your home stuff on your own hardware at work, but keep both sets with you all the time.

Sadly I'm in the office IT restriction zone. As well as restricting web access, I can't plug my Palm into the work computer or even install the software for it! Apparently it's ok for the managers to have PDA's purchased by the company plugged in, but not for us mere mortals to use our own. (Go figure!)

It's creating a bit of a chasm for me since my Palm used to be where the action lists / calendar got stored. I've toyed with a hPDA before, but I "think" with a computer screen.

Guess I need to re-train my brain to love the cards. But basically, I'm forced to have two systems and they won't ever mesh that well without an overhead of combining the two. Now I type it, I'm considering a system where I could use my work time to sync my home and work items / calendars since it's an overhead they are forcing me to take on. That'll give them something to think about if they query the hours spent on "General Admin" :)

 
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