Work and personal lives used to be separate, but no longer. That’s the broad conclusion of a study that was jointly conducted by ad shop Gyro and publisher Forbes, MediaDailyNews reported.

The survey polled nearly 550 business managers in February in the United States and Europe to gain insight into the increasingly overlapping worlds of work time and personal lives brought about by digital technology. Dozens of qualitative interviews were also conducted as part of the study.

According to the survey, the business and personal worlds of most managers have merged into one. Fifteen percent of those surveyed said they struggle to separate their personal from their work lives, while 98 percent indicated that they deal with work issues via email outside the “normal” 9-to-5 workweek.

On the flip side, 98 percent also said they spend time on personal matters at the office, with more than 40 percent indicating they spend more than 10 percent of their office time on such matters.

The survey also found that 73 percent of the respondents believe work-related spillover into personal time isn’t a bad thing; it allows more time to think about business decisions, and 59 percent said they make better business decisions as a result.

The study did find differences between how Americans perceive the changes versus Europeans, with the latter tending to view work encroachment on personal time more negatively. Thirty percent of the European respondents said they felt irritated by the blending of work and personal time, compared with 19 percent of Americans.

The study concludes that the challenge for marketers trying to communicate with decision-making managers who are “on” regardless of time or location is to “understand their motivations, emotional attitudes and levels of satisfaction with round-the-clock, all-device messaging.”