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"It had been another busy day at the office. As I shut down my computer, I relished my accomplishments over the past seven and a half hours. I had called the caterer to select hors d'oeuvres for my impending nuptials and, after protracted discussion, settled on mini-tacos, shrimp quesadillas, cocktail meatballs, chicken sat\u00E9s and flautas. I engaged in much back-and-forth with the folks at Krispy Kreme regarding my special order of 250 Original Glazed for my doughnut wedding cake. I ventured to a crafts store 10 blocks from my D.C. office to buy doilies, a pedestal and a faux floral garland for said cake, as well as supplies to construct a birthday card for my fianc\u00E9, Karl. Returning to my cube, I painstakingly sewed 30 tiny bells to card stock (using a sewing kit conveniently stashed in my desk drawer), applied dozens of iridescent robot stickers and sequins, and crafted, after much deliberation, a fittingly heartfelt message using no fewer than five aromatic glitter markers. (OK, even I realize this sounds egregious, but Karl and I live together\u2014when *else* am I supposed to do this stuff?) Then I called six shoe stores in Beverly Hills to find a pair of boots I'd seen on *Entertainment Tonight* and, once I located them, ordered them to be delivered to my office. Oh, I also completed an essential work task: I wrote a sign for a conference. It reads: \\\"Welcome, law librarians!\\\"\\n\\nThe latter is what most people would call working\u2014engaging in duties, such as composing direct mail letters and other sales materials that earn me a paycheck as a marketing copywriter. That's in contrast to what I call homing: all the personal business that rests firmly outside one's job description but that often gets more of our focus, passion and billable hours than whatever we're supposed to be accomplishing on the clock.\\n\\nI'm not proud of my homing-from-work habit, but I'm not alone in it, either: A Self.com poll reveals that 63 percent of women admit to tending to personal matters on the job. And a survey by America Online and Salary.com finds that we spend more than two hours of nonapproved break time a day doing something other than working. As a subscriber to seven gossip blogs, I'd say that sounds about right. Given that I have a wedding to plan, a book to write and this article to finish, the boundary between my home and work lives is eroding daily. I know I've crossed it when I spend an afternoon in my cubicle scouring the Internet for flights to Rome. (A honeymoon doesn't plan itself, people!)\\n\\nBefore you rat me out to my boss, know that it goes both ways: I'm as likely to spend an evening on my sofa proofing a 30-page brochure for tax lawyers when I'd rather be giving my full attention to *Real Housewives of Orange County.* But I can't feel too sorry for myself. Clearly, it's not my workload that's making me scramble to meet my deadlines\u2014it's my personal life.\\n\\n\\\"Since some tasks, like going to the post office and calling your insurance company, can only be done during the day, people make up for lost work time in the evening by using laptops and PDAs at home,\\\" says Karen Leland, author of *Watercooler Wisdom: How Smart People Prosper in the Face of Conflict, Pressure and Change* (New Harbinger Publications). Other tasks, such as e-mailing a slide show of vacation photos to 25 of your closest friends, MapQuesting a pal's weekend house or ordering a gift off your cousin's baby-shower registry, are simply easier to do at work, when you're likely to be online anyway. I've even had friends forward me responses to their Match.com ads for my critique (a moral duty that, in my book, trumps any pending deadline).\\n\\n#### Set some limits\\n\\nOf course, just because everyone's mixing and matching home and work doesn't mean it's a good idea for your career or happiness. \\\"If you're known in your circle as the friend who always cancels happy hour plans, or you're regularly eating dinner straight from your fridge at 10 P.M. because you didn't start 'work work' until 3 P.M. and now you're in a bind, you're overdoing personal stuff,\\\" says Cindy Glovinsky, a psychotherapist and author of *One Thing at a Time* (St. Martin's Griffin).\\n\\nLike most things, successful homing from work is all about setting reasonable limits. Cap the time spent on personal matters at 30 to 45 minutes, not including your lunch hour, parceled into two or three brief work breaks throughout the day, Glovinsky says, \\\"Switching gears from a work project to make a social plan can renew your energy; you can even try looking at the personal chores as a reward for completing legitimate work.\\\" Also, limiting the non-job-related duties you attend to ensures that you'll finish quicker and have your evenings free.\\n\\nI'm skeptical that it's possible to debate the virtues of cheese puffs versus pepperoni canap\u00E9s in 15-minute increments, but I agreed to test these expert strategies in an attempt to find a better balance\u2014and not get fired! Here's how I did.\\n\\n#### Put real work first\\n\\n\\\"The worst time to waste is early in the day, because that gets you off track right from the start,\\\" says Tony Schwartz, coauthor of *The Power of Full Engagement* (Simon &amp; Schuster). I'm not happy to hear that, as I like to ease into my morning slowly with a cup of coffee, a toasted cinnamon-raisin bagel and a two-hour-plus leisurely perusal of my e-mail. By the time I'm done, it's 11:30, which means I often work through lunch to catch up, grabbing a snack from the vending machine while furiously, sloppily, desperately trying to prepare for my afternoon staff meeting. My new mandate, as dictated by Schwartz: \\\"Have your bagel and coffee at home, read the paper on your commute, then, at 9 A.M., or as soon as you arrive, hit the ground running.\\\"\\n\\nThe advice sounds hard-core, but it turns out that Schwartz is not a relentless taskmaster. \\\"When you have a big job to do, the default response is to push yourself harder for longer,\\\" he says. \\\"But you can do your best work for only so long before you need to rest and refuel. Managing your energy is key to being productive.\\\" Schwartz tells me to zip away on work for 90-minute spans, then reenergize with a 15-minute break to squeeze in a call to my honeymoon travel agent or wedding bandleader. \\\"Taking regular breaks renews you, ramps up your efficiency and allows you to deal with personal obligations,\\\" Schwartz says.\\n\\nThe next day, I sit down at my computer at 9 A.M., at which point I'm allowed to give my e-mail a 60-second once-over, responding only to smoking-hot messages. As a result, I begin writing a legal-product catalog straightaway and keep plugging without interruption until 10:30, when I answer work e-mail for 15 minutes, then duck out for a 15-minute walk. \\\"The best way to refuel is to do something cardiovascular,\\\" Schwartz says. On my stroll, I sneak in visits to the bank and dry cleaner. Then back to my desk for another 90 minutes of focus. That brings me to about 12:30 P.M., when I'm allowed to respond to personal e-mail for 15 minutes before lunch.\\n\\nAs for the midday meal, \\\"take a half hour to recharge, even if it's just enjoying your salad, at least three times a week,\\\" advises Kerul Kassel, a leadership coach in Harmony, Florida. Kassel recommends using a full hour to relax but concedes it's OK to run errands or make personal calls (gotta find a pensione near the Vatican!), as long as I allot some time each week simply to chill out. \\\"Limit lunch-hour obligations, whether it's entertaining clients or hitting the card store, to twice a week,\\\" she says.\\n\\nSchwartz urges me to take another break between 3 and 4 P.M., a window he calls a circadian trough. \\\"That's when the body wants to sleep,\\\" he says. He suggests I jog up and down a few flights of stairs to revive my concentration, which wakes me up. After two days on Schwartz's schedule, the benefits are clear: Not only do I power through three hours of work by lunch on both mornings, but I also stroll into nearby Georgetown and sit on a bench by the water, where I eat my sandwich and feed the crusts to a family of ducks. Because I've finished the day's most arduous task\u2014the legal catalog\u2014I'm buoyed by a sense of accomplishment and return refreshed. By 5:30 on both days, I'm free to meet a friend for drinks or amble home and prepare a dinner for me and Karl that doesn't come in a microwavable pouch. (Amazing what you can accomplish when you're not peeking at your Gmail 13 times an hour!)\\n\\n#### Use the buddy system\\n\\nMy coworker David and I are good friends, and we spend far too much time exchanging snarky phone calls and e-mail messages and, of course, commiserating over our workload. Kassel tells me we'd have less to gripe about if the two of us paired up more productively. \\\"Agree to work for 90 minutes, during which time neither of you is allowed to make personal calls or answer personal e-mail. Then go grab a cup of coffee together. You can also alternate doing each other's errands,\\\" Kassel says. After all, why should two people wait in line to buy stamps?\\n\\nAnother benefit to coupling up is the chance to tap your office pal's brainpower. In fact, it was David who ultimately suggested the perfect site for my wedding. With a phone call to a pal who was opening a quaint B&amp;B in town, he saved me days of lunchtime visits to soulless reception halls.\\n\\nWhen I explain the plan to David, he says, \\\"It's about time we harnessed our powers for good.\\\" We call an immediate moratorium on catty e-mail messages, resolving to restrict our electronic dialogue to work matters\u2014not a bad idea, given that our employer could potentially retrieve our messages!\u2014toil in silence and take our breaks in tandem.\\n\\nWhen we try it, only 15 minutes pass before I'm hit by the overwhelming urge to e-mail my comrade about a certain colleague's fuchsia pantsuit and matching leather pumps. I heroically resist; the promised java break keeps me cranking like a good worker bee. And knowing that David will eventually make my life easier by running errands that fall in the ninth circle of hell (the post office!\u2014a favor he knows I'll gladly return) propels me through my must-dos, both business and personal.\\n\\n#### End e-mail tag\\n\\nWhenever I try to make plans with my girlfriends via e-mail, I'm astonished by how a simple \\\"Where should we eat tonight?\\\" can morph into an endless digital discussion\u2014that *still* fails to produce a plan. I compulsively check each reply as if I expect it to hold the winning Powerball number instead of something along the lines of \\\"How do you feel about Italian?\\\" Hey, I'm only doing what most people I know do these days; 53 percent of women in the Self.com poll say e-mailing friends is their biggest non-work-related office time waster. To curb the inbox influx of personal mail, \\\"write your messages as a list of questions, offering your friends multiple choices, whenever possible,\\\" suggests Neil Fiore, Ph.D., author of *Awaken Your Strongest Self: Break Free of Stress, Inner Conflict, and Self-Sabotage* (McGraw-Hill). \\\"That way, everyone can respond to each item while pushing SEND only once.\\\" When I explain this strategy to Karl later that evening, he shrugs and says, \\\"It sounds like you need to e-mail like a man.\\\"\\n\\nLater that week, while finalizing a rendezvous with three e-mail-happy friends, I channel Fiore and type \\\"Three things I need to know\\\" in the subject line. The rest of my message looks like a pop quiz:\\n\\n1. What time are we getting together? 7, 7:30 or 7:45?  \\n2. Where are we going?  \\n3. Where is it located?\\n\\nIn less than 10 minutes, two friends have earned an A-plus, replying with a brief answer to each question. My third pal, completely baffled by my uncharacteristically terse communication style, responds with two questions of her own:\\n\\n1. Is this Cathy? And, if not,   \\n2. What have you done with my friend?\\n\\nOnce I assure my pal that I have not been lobotomized, I synthesize the responses and take the lead. \\\"Based on what you've said, we're meeting at 7:30 at Circle Bistro,\\\" I e-mail. \\\"See you tonight.\\\" With our plans cemented, I get back to work. Score!\\n\\n#### Tame to do's\\n\\nMy to do list\u2014a cryptic mishmash of work and personal tasks littered with miscellaneous phone numbers and circled mystery words like *red*\u2014is anything but an easy-to-follow road map for my day. My eye twitches just thinking about it. \\\"As soon as you start making circles and arrows, your list becomes more like a piece of art than a workable document,\\\" says Erica Ecker, founder of The Spacialist, a professional organizing company in New York City. \\\"Plus, jotting tasks randomly makes it tough to prioritize.\\\" Her idea: \\\"Fold a paper in half lengthwise, label one side *home* and the other *work,* then write everything you need to accomplish for the week in each category in a master list,\\\" Ecker says. \\\"By emptying your brain onto this page, you won't waste energy trying to remember what you need to do.\\\"\\n\\nNext, she has me create a separate list for each day of the week, containing only tasks I can reasonably do from nine to five. \\\"If you know something is going to take longer, such as a writing project, give it a daily time limit and complete it in bits over the course of the week,\\\" she explains. What's most radical is her edict that I limit my daily list to only five work tasks and three personal tasks, a major departure from my usual book-length tally. \\\"When you continually write down more than you can accomplish, the individual to do's become like wallpaper\u2014you ignore them,\\\" she explains. \\\"Plus, you never get to savor the satisfaction of completing everything you set out to achieve.\\\" To help me prioritize, she tells me something I don't want to hear: \\\"The item you're dreading is usually the most urgent and important; that's the one you should put first.\\\" What about the leftovers on the master list? \\\"If you happen to find yourself with extra time and your dailies are done, grab an item off that list and plunge in,\\\" she says. I have my marching orders. This is what I come up with for my daily to do's:\\n\\nHOME  \\n1. Call marriage bureau about paperwork.   \\n2. Pick up Karl's suit from cleaners.  \\n3. Write thank-you notes to Bonita, Chris and Maria.\\n\\nWORK   \\n1. Write intro for conference brochure.   \\n2. Spend two hours developing proposal.  \\n3. E-mail David to schedule time to show art proofs.   \\n4. E-mail department to schedule brainstorming.   \\n5. Call Rena to discuss legal copy.\\n\\nAt first, my truncated list makes me feel like an underachiever, but my doubt is swiftly replaced by satisfaction once I've written the conference brochure text I'd been putting off and made the dreaded call to the marriage bureau. Plus, I manage to wrap up my obligations early enough to have a fun dinner out with friends\u2014again! Now, that feels like a worthwhile to do.\\n\\n#### I'm reformed!\\n\\nThree months after adopting the pros' strategies, my leisurely mornings of coffee and social e-mailing are now officially history. I'm not complaining a bit, however. Because I'm doing more work at work, I no longer have to spend my evenings sifting through marketing materials instead of hanging out with my husband-to-be. And I'm proud to say that my wedding planning no longer comes at the expense of my employer\u2014although my fianc\u00E9 would argue the festivities are still costing *us* a fortune!  \\n  \\nPhoto Credit: Plamen Petkov"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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