Personal Tasks During Work Hours: Yea or Nay?
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Do you ever find yourself pulled to do personal tasks during work hours?
We talked about homing from work over at Corporette a few years ago, but we haven’t talked about that over here. DO you ever find yourself “homing from work,” maybe particularly during the holiday season, when it feels like there are a million different gift ideas to research? (And holiday recipes! And year-end financial tasks! And more!)
Do you have a great system to keep yourself from doing personal tasks during working hours (such as, say, keeping Amazon blocked on your work computer, or keeping a written list of things to look into “later”)? Or is your office culture laid-back enough that no one seems to mind and it’s quieter during the month of December anyway?
In our post on Corporette, we considered a list of “productive personal things” that kind of had to be done during working hours, including:
doctors’ appointments (no other time to do them, really)
anything that can be accomplished within 60 minutes between the hours of 11–2 (your “lunch hour”), e.g., a midday workout, a walk or lunch date with friends, a trip to the drugstore to pick things up, a manicure, a blowout
anything that can be confined to a 10-minute period at any point in the day (reading a news story or blog or two, checking Facebook, shopping an online sale, doing personal research, etc. — the problem is getting sucked into something longer than 10 minutes!)
I think it’s the last problem that I struggle with the most as a working mom — getting sucked into something longer than 10 minutes.
I may THINK “Ooh, let’s quickly add that list of books to my son’s wishlist on Amazon so the grandparents have something to buy,” and then you look up and 45 minutes have passed and you’ve gone down three different rabbitholes.
(This was one of the main benefits when I tried using virtual assistants to delegate family tasks!)
How about you guys? As far as work/life boundaries go, do you consider yourself “guilty” of doing personal tasks during work hours — or does it make you more efficient and productive as a worker because you and your boss both know you’ll get done what you need to get done?
What are your personal limits for what personal tasks are acceptable to do at work? If you’re supervising others at work, where do you advise them to draw the line?
Some of the best books for working mothers include:
Stock photo via Stencil.
I think anyone who says they don’t do personal business during work hours is not being truthful.
My household would not function if I didn’t home from work.
OK. Yes, of course I do. There is a ton of “personal” business that must happen during the workday. I don’t think this is surprising for anyone who has a desk job. Of course, if you’re a teacher or customer service person that’s a whole different thing.
Zero guilt, absolutely. I am a manager; I supervise 8 people. I home from work all the time and I know my employees do it too. I get my work done, and they are getting their work done. As long as that’s happening, I want to be treated like a grown-up and treat others like grownups too.
Absolutely have to do home tasks during work hours. I see no way around it – if I need to make medical appointments or such those usually need to be made during regular 8-5 business hours. There’s only so much that you can do at night or on weekends!
I feel zero guilt about doing home tasks at work, and I don’t feel the need to put a 10 minute limit on it or anything like that. I do have to bill my time, though, so I feel like that prevents abuse.
100% Agree and I use that term too. I have a global team – if you want me working at 6:30 am or 9 pm, I’m going to be buying my plane tickets or running to the store at 3 pm when I need a mental break.
Homing for work is the only way we get life admin done. I often have a running list of all things that need doing and will knock them out over lunchtime or on a Friday afternoon when I’m feeling otherwise unmotivated. I go to conferences on weekends, answer emails in the evening, mark essays on a Sunday am so I think it’s a fair trade.