Since it’s been a year in which our public discourse has been dominated by preparations for Brexit, I’m expecting that ‘TRANSITION’ is going to be one of the words of the year next month when such things are announced.

The psychologist Daniel Levinson reflected on life’s transitions more than most. His research with men of various socio-economic backgrounds in the 1970s discovered a predictable and orderly sequence to the changes that occurred in all their lives (similar work on women’s lives came later).

The model of adult psychosocial development he created –  documented in his book ‘The Seasons of a Man’s Life’ – revealed specific seven to 10 year periods of growth in their lives;

• 22-28 years old – ‘Entering the adult world’ – initial choices of work, love and lifestyle
• 33-40 years old – ‘Settling down’ – climbing the ladder of work, power, society
• 45-50 years old – ‘Entering middle adulthood’ – working on a new or modified life structure after re-appraising your ‘life so far’
• 55-60 years old – ‘Culmination of middle adulthood’ – focussing more on legacy

Between each of these periods are four to five year transitional periods and in life, as in Brexit, these transitions are often turbulent. They involve coming to terms with what one has – or hasn’t – achieved, making choices about a new life structure to strive for, and then starting to work through the changes that these choices require. Feelings of confusion and paralysis can be experienced in all of life’s transition stages. Indeed, one of them can be so dramatic that it even has its own special name in the English language – the ‘midlife crisis’.

For me, Levinson’s work complements the ‘Horizons of Focus’ model, a GTD® framework for creating a vision of the future and thinking about what one is trying to achieve over timescales of various lengths (i.e. three to five year vision, 12-18 month objectives etc.). Whereas the Horizons of Focus® model helps to clarify where you trying to get to next, Levinson’s model offers a high-level perspective on where you are in life’s journey as a whole. It therefore helps you think about how your personal development needs will inevitably change over time. This can then be factored into those decisions about what to do next as natural, organic life changes start to take place.

I first came across Levinson’s work in a mentoring and coaching context, where there is evidence that role transition in organisations will be quicker when mentoring is used. One of the reasons that mentoring does this is because it provides a space for reflection and focus as you tackle the internal and external challenges that transition presents. GTD helps in a similar way, too, creating the space to think clearly and keeping you focussed through the regular review and reflection practices that are built into the horizons of focus model and the Weekly Review®.

So where are you on life’s journey? Embarking on a new phase of life? Personal or professional transition on the horizon? According to Levinson, it’s inevitable that you will experience all the different ‘seasons of life’, but – alas – achieving success in everything you set out to achieve isn’t inevitable. It depends on many things – making the right choices, putting in the work and, sometimes, being in the right place at the right time – but, either way, whatever you’re striving for, it will help if you’re aware of where you are, focussed on where you want to be, and taking clear, consistent steps in the right direction.

For more on this topic, check out Robert Peake’s blog about how GTD lists help you transition into leadership. For more on Brexit, just switch something on. Anything.

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Miles arrived back in the UK in 1999 having spent the ’90s working in corporate language training in Italy and Japan. He then started working in university IT service management in the north of England and held roles in e-learning, project management and training and development before becoming responsible for delivery of IT help, support and guidance at the UK’s 4th largest university in 2011. Miles is qualified as a certified trainer and a Senior Associate of Next Action Associates, promoting GTD in the North of England. More about Miles

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Robert Peake is a Senior Associate who loves solving meaningful problems and helping people overcome challenges to achieve their goals. He served as CTO of David Allen Company, the US-based firm that has certified Next Action Associates to deliver GTD training in the UK, for many years. More about Robert

Imagine for a moment you work in an organisation where people no longer respond to their e-mail. One where it has become ‘normal’ to have to send messages two or three times – then pick up a phone and call people – to get a response on some issue you are working on.

Or, if that is too much of a stretch for your imagination, how about imagining that you work in a place where all the meetings start like clockwork, five to fifteen minutes late, then run over time.

What? Oh.

You do work there?  Sorry to hear that.

The good news? You are not alone. The bad news? It sounds like there might be a challenge with standards where you work.

For over the past nine years, our work with GTD® has been producing transformational results for individuals. Our clients report a powerful impact on their ability to prioritise, focus and move forward on things that matter to them.

After years of positive feedback we were very clear on the individual benefits of using GTD. It took a bit longer for us to notice that when we did this with a significant number of people in a team, department or organisation, that things started changing for the whole organisation. The sum of the individual changes became greater than its parts when the GTD practices became part of how team members communicated with each other and an implicit part of the organisational expectations.

This was remarkable, particularly because we didn’t set out to try and change the whole organisation, but it started to happen as we hit a tipping point of GTD users. This got us thinking; what if we could target those results? What if we could predictably produce transformative results at the organisational level?

We believe that there is a way to offer clear, simple and granular guidance about working standards, in a way that will have a dramatic impact on organisational results – and on the experience of working in the organisation.

It is worth noting at this point that we are not talking about ‘culture change’. With GTD we are focused on a specific part of organisational culture, which we are referring to as Working Standards – ‘the way we get things done around here’. This is about how people make themselves effective, or not, as teams; rather than all aspects of organisational culture, such as values, history, etc. It is on changing what are considered ‘normal’ team standards in the domain of execution that we believe we can make a transformative contribution.

What are the current standards for working with each other toward agreed objectives in your organisation?

To take the examples from the opening paragraphs, is it normal in your organisation to expect a 24 hour response time on e-mails that you send, or is it normal to have to chase people for things you’ve asked for? Is it normal to start meetings on time, with a clear outcome for the meeting, or that people show up consistently 5-10 minutes late with no clear idea why they are in the room? Those are what we call Working Standards.

These are simple things. So simple that one might ask why a senior leader would worry about such things. Surely these things are unworthy of the attention of senior leadership, no?

Well, yes, actually. These things are simple, but they are not unimportant.

On an individual level for instance, learning to touch-type seems beneath consideration for many leaders of a certain age. No surprise then that they find it impossible to keep on top of the flow of communications coming at them. They can’t keep up because they are trying to hunt and peck their way with two fingers through their day, which is like trying to sprint with a broken foot. Not smart.

Similarly, the organisational costs of a lack of awareness about the cost of getting simple things wrong at a team level doesn’t mean those costs don’t exist, and the costs of poor e-mail management and low standards for meeting hygiene – to name just two components of working standards – are huge.

Here are just some of the things our clients have told us they experience when they hit a tipping point of GTD users in their team or department:

• Shorter email response times
• Meetings starting on time, with clear outcomes
• Meetings ending (on time) with trackable accountabilities for agreed projects and next actions
• Leaders delegating sooner, and in larger chunks
• Managers knowing what their team is working on
• Teams being clear on what is expected of them
• Better quality, quicker conversations about capacity and prioritisation between managers and managed
• Getting clear on what is current by regularly getting inboxes to zero
• More confidence in prioritisation decisions, based on regular reviews of all commitments
• Greater ability to respond to the unplanned and unforeseen, without going into overwhelm or paralysis

When GTD is implemented on a team or departmental level, it enhances the likelihood that the organisation can use what it knows by making individuals and teams more responsive. Once people have a system for getting on top of their workflow, many of the bottlenecks to organisational information flow are removed or reduced.

At a team level, working in this way is where the benefits of collaboration can show up. And collaboration is key to mastering the dynamic and chaotic environment that organisations now operate in. In our view, an approach that not only creates space for individuals but enhances responsiveness across the organisation will lead to more and better collaboration.

And all of the above can also contribute to some less tangible things, like getting home in time to see family, and being more present when there. It isn’t a huge stretch to see how the above can start to drive things like higher employee engagement scores, and fewer sick days in the organisation.

Sound utopic?

It’s not. With a systematic approach, those results are predictable and reliable.

How to do this in a way that is sustainable and lasting? How to make these outcomes part of the normal expectations for how work gets done in the organisation?

I’ll use my next few blogs to explore…

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Edward is co-founder and director of Next Action Associates. His professional background is in executive coaching and training, and he has over 15 years of experience in the areas of leadership, productivity, and motivation. He began his coaching career in outplacement and life/work design, and also has experience in training facilitators, delivering presentation skills master classes, and enhancing performance in individuals and organizations through application of the principles of cognitive psychology. More about Edward

In many organisations these days, wellness is ‘the new black’, a hot topic from board room to break room. In a recent report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, “The Wellness Effect – The Impact of Workplace Programmes”, the report’s authors found that 69% of employees surveyed in organisations large and small agreed that “wellness (is) an important part of their organisation’s culture.”

The report also found that overall, “…employers’ efforts to create a wellness culture have been broadly successful.”  Having a wellness culture drives employee engagement, and the report’s authors believe that it also represents a competitive advantage for organisations.

When it comes to the structure of the wellness programmes themselves, the report found that the most common elements include stress-management techniques, flexible work schedules, healthier food options in break rooms and canteens, better ergonomics, financial counselling, and meditation or yoga classes. Interestingly, employees and employers differed on which elements companies should emphasise to alleviate stress: through focused stress management programmes (as most employers believe), or through more flexible working hours (as more employees believe).

All very valuable things.  But I think most organisations’ wellness programmes are missing something quite fundamental here. Organisations’ approach to wellness is targeted primarily at things that can help outside of the work we do. Very few programmes are focusing on making the experience of working itself more stress free, without sacrificing productivity.

And this is where the work we do in GTD® comes in. Being highly productive and being stress-free do not have to be mutually exclusive. Implementing GTD helps us get more of the right things done, in less time, with less stress, and better mental clarity.  We focus on removing the grit from our working practices, enabling better perspective and a sense of relaxed control in our work.

GTD is wellness within work.

The proof? In a recent survey we carried out amongst our clients, 67% reported experiencing significantly lower stress levels after implementing the GTD methodology. At the same time, 82% reported being highly productive at work, as opposed to 29% before having implemented GTD.

So if you are involved in your organisation’s wellness programme, ask yourself whether it is doing all it can to enable highly productive, stress-free working. The best wellness programmes do.

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Todd is co-founder and director of Next Action Associates. He has been a leader in the global learning and development and talent management community for more than 20 years. His coaching and seminar experience includes work with senior executives and teams at Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Schneider Electric, UK Government agencies, and Discovery Communications. More about Todd

Click here for Part I

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Robert Peake is a Senior Associate who loves solving meaningful problems and helping people overcome challenges to achieve their goals. He served as CTO of David Allen Company, the US-based firm that has certified Next Action Associates to deliver GTD training in the UK, for many years. More about Robert

Last month my colleague Todd Brown blogged about Aristotle and GTD, and the topic must have jiggled loose some errant neural connections in my brain because later that day I found myself remembering a classic Monty Python sketch called the ‘International Philosophy Final’. Therefore, since today is the show’s birthday – it’s exactly 48 years since the very first episode of the Flying Circus was broadcast on the BBC – I decided on a companion piece.

The sketch opens at Munich’s Olympic Football Stadium with a team comprised of German philosophers (Kant, Schopenhauer, Heidegger…) emerging from the tunnel followed by an equally star-studded Greek side (Aristotle, Socrates, Plato…). However, after some lively warm-up exercises, as soon as the ref blows the whistle for kick-off all the ‘players’ immediately become motionless, deep in thought. Apart from a harsh booking for Nietsche, nothing at all happens for virtually the whole game.

It is, of course, gloriously silly but it also prompted some reflections about GTD® and team-working. The first thing that struck me about the sketch was how well it exemplifies a team deep in the productive experience. Once the game starts, everyone on the pitch is instantly focused. In most office environments it’s hard to imagine everyone suddenly in the zone as the clock hand ticks over to 9am. It’s more likely that you’ll see a synchronised swallow dive into email inboxes as this recent tweet about another intellectual giant suggests;

“If Einstein were alive, he’d wake up tomorrow and spend the first couple of hours digging out his inbox and getting a bunch of Slack notifications. And we wouldn’t have relativity.”

However, a team in Sheffield that I worked with over the summer does things differently once a week when they engage in an interesting team GTD practice. Each Friday morning the whole team is encouraged to do their GTD Weekly Review® at the same time. An expectation has been set by the team leader that they will allow each other to be undistracted during this time and she sets the tone by carrying out her own Weekly Review, too.

Part of the leadership message that this gives is that it’s OK for the world to wait a while, and it’s a message that carries beyond their Weekly Review into the way they manage their email responsiveness and availability for interruption on the other days of the week, too. They now know that they have tacit support not to allow the team to be overly driven by the latest and the loudest. GTD helps them maintain their focus but the managerial air cover is vital, too.

Thinking about this team gear change I was also reminded about something I saw earlier this year at a client’s offices in Stockholm. There I observed the practice of Fika, a workplace tradition in Swedish culture whereby everyone stops at least once a day at the same time for coffee and cake. The tray of pastries that appeared in the seminar room mid-afternoon provided a delightful interlude and while this isn’t uncommon on a training day, it was fascinating to discover that this was a part of their regular daily routine, too.

Not only does Fika enable breaks in the workday for people to mentally pause and refresh but the fact that everybody attends means it contributes to the social cohesion of the team. It’s also an important vehicle for informal communication of what’s happening in the organisation in ways that formal meetings don’t – a better way to share exactly the same stuff that might otherwise fill inboxes through the day with more distraction, less clarity and no cake at all. It’s such a valued practice in Sweden that it’s not only widespread in society but in some companies it’s almost mandatory to join in.

In both Sheffield and Stockholm, then, the value of the team pause, whether it’s the reflective space of the team weekly review or the refreshment space of the Fika, is recognised and nurtured as a group reset that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

So, in the spirit of a healthy pause, take a slice of metaphorical metaphysical birthday cake and join the Monty Python team for the international philosophy final. You’ll also get to see who won the game with a ‘Eureka’ moment in the 90th minute (hint, hint)…

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Miles arrived back in the UK in 1999 having spent the ’90s working in corporate language training in Italy and Japan. He then started working in university IT service management in the north of England and held roles in e-learning, project management and training and development before becoming responsible for delivery of IT help, support and guidance at the UK’s 4th largest university in 2011. Miles is qualified as a certified trainer and a Senior Associate of Next Action Associates, promoting GTD in the North of England. More about Miles

Being often in a hurry, millennials love to abbreviate. One of my favourites is “tl;dr” (too long; didn’t read). In case you’re a millennial reading this now, here’s the “tl;dr” version of this article: if you’re afraid of missing out on the breadth of what life has to offer, but also not wanting to be held back from chasing your specific dreams, the Getting Things Done® methodology can help.

You might have to do a bit more reading, though, if you want to understand how.

For those of you who are older than the internet, let me pause to explain that the anxieties of this generation seem to be described by the tension that exists between two of their favourite acronyms – FOMO (fear of missing out) and YOLO (you only live once).

Just as it’s a truism that you’ll never be as young as you are now, it’s also true that no previous generation has had to deal with so much input in our ever-expanding intellectual universe. FOMO is a natural consequence of being exposed – by social media in particular – to more opportunities in a day than one’s ancestors may have had in a lifetime. How do you decide what to do with this constant, nagging sense that, whatever you pick, some better option may pass you by?

David Allen points the way out of this trap when he observes that, “You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know what you’re not doing – completely.” This applies to all the commitments in one’s life. Having things you want to do, or are committed to do, rattling around in your brain instead of tracked in a trusted system, is a surefire way to not only feel, but actually experience, missing out.

Having a system not only lets you be decisive, but helps you trust those decisions in the moment. Of course, you can’t know what you can’t know – but you can take an inventory of everything you’ve said you want to do in the form of outcomes and next actions, and then make a conscious choice.

Try it, and you’ll see for yourself what relief it can bring. An act as simple as writing down everything that’s on your mind can help. Taking it to the next level by applying the systematic thought process of the GTD® methodology can banish FOMO altogether.

By contrast, YOLO reprieves the Nike slogan, “Just do it!” Perhaps as one way to counter the stress of seemingly-infinite choices, the temptation to jump at a new opportunity – even if it seems wild or reckless – looks like it could help. Indeed, in the GTD methodology we do advocate courage in going after one’s dreams. But doing so need not involve poor planning and a trail of wreckage.

You see, too often I see people “drop everything” without really knowing what the “everything” is that they’ve chosen to drop. By not only having an up-to-date system, but then taking the time when something unexpected comes along to spell out your next step and desired outcome, you also minimise the chance that you end up going off half-cocked.

You don’t need to miss out, nor do you need to be impulsive to overcome decision paralysis. By building and maintaining a system that helps you weigh new options against current commitments, you can trust your decisions, follow through on them systematically, and enjoy each moment along the way.

After all, isn’t that what it’s really all about?

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Robert Peake is a Senior Associate who loves solving meaningful problems and helping people overcome challenges to achieve their goals. He served as CTO of David Allen Company, the US-based firm that has certified Next Action Associates to deliver GTD training in the UK, for many years. More about Robert

Dr. Peer Wiethoff is the Foreign Trade Manager at NOKIA and has been a user of Getting Things Done® (GTD®) for over nine years. His journey with GTD revealed interesting benefits for him, even as a person who is already organised. Peer is now a certified GTD Trainer

After the first week of consistent application, Peer left the office on Fridays and was surprised by what he found: nothing. He found nothing. There were no thoughts about the unfinished work on his desk; no thoughts of the ongoing projects… His head was empty. He truly had a weekend.

Best of all was his next holiday, in Thailand: “In the past, my mind used to be in the office for the first three days of the holiday,” he said. “This time, however, I was present from day one; I could switch off, lie on the beach and simply enjoy the feel of the sun on my face.”

Back in the office, 500 unread emails awaited him. “Thanks to GTD, I even felt relaxed about this daunting number of unread mails.” Peer processes and organises his inbox consistently and always brings it back to zero – usually two to three times per week.

In addition to the personal increase in productivity, Peer reports that he was “more effective”. “I collect delegated tasks on my ‘waiting for’ list. If I get no feedback, I ask for it. My leadership is clearer, and since using GTD, I’ve even noticed team members and colleagues behaving more ‘loyally’ towards me.” At regular meetings with employees, both parties are aware of which topics are pending and can run through them together – in a similar way to the Weekly Review®. Peer says the entire team benefits from transparency across all projects. “There is no longer a sudden ‘scuffle’ around forgotten tasks or projects.”

“Thanks to GTD, I keep a clear head even in very challenging situations. I know that with GTD I can map everything, because there is always a desired result and a next action. That sounds – and indeed is – quite simple, but sometimes I need a little more planning than these two reference points (results/next actions) in order to have all projects clearly mapped out and off my mind.”

In conclusion, he says, “With GTD, I not only do much more, but I’m also much more relaxed and can be 100% present and focused on whatever what I do – or not do, for that matter!”

Peer Wiethoff has been conducting internal GTD training at NOKIA for over year in his capacity as Foreign Economic Manager.

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In the week that the latest iPhones were launched, I’d like to encourage you to take a mental journey back to classical Greece, for some helpful advice about modern life. Those of you who have been reading my blogs for a while will know that I’m a history buff, and in my reading, I’m always fascinated to come across insights from the past that help us manage our modern, digital world.

There’s an Aristotle quote I use in seminars: “We cannot change the wind, but we can set the sails differently.”  He’s encouraging a proactive, can-do stance in the world.  If you’re complaining about interruptions from your colleagues, you’re complaining about the wind. There is nothing you can do to affect the wind, it’s beyond your control. But you’re not powerless. How are you going to set the sails differently?

How about working from home, or taking your laptop down to the coffee shop? Or maybe set your email client to work offline, so you only see new emails when you’re ready? Don’t be a victim.

Recently I came across another idea from our man Aristotle that struck me as particularly resonant in thinking about how we choose to spend our time, and in achieving a healthy balance between doing and being.

When thinking about the things we engage in every day, Aristotle made a distinction between two types: there are “telic” activities, from the Greek word telos, or “purpose”. Telic activities have an end state – the point of them is the achievement of some goal.  Read an article, finish the presentation for the conference, buy a new car. In each case you’re working toward the achievement of something, and once it’s complete, you can tick it off as done. You could do it again, but only if you were interested in repeating the outcome.

And then there are “atelic” activities. These are things we engage with that have no particular goal. When you’re spending time with your friends or family, you’re not being goal-oriented. At some point you’ll stop doing it, but that doesn’t mean there is no more of it to do.

The work we do in GTD® is primarily about your telic world. In identifying and managing next actions and outcomes, we’re helping to optimise our telic selves. And that’s no bad thing. Achievement is enjoyable, and we get paid for being telic, after all.

But we’re not exclusively telic beings. David Allen says, “you do your work, but you are not your work.”

And here’s where GTD brings the two pieces of Aristotle’s model together. If you want fully to engage in something atelic, without mental distraction, you need to have your telic world off your mind. It’s exactly that that GTD does. It optimises the telic and enables the atelic.

So the next time you’re up for some reflection on whether your life is balanced, spare a thought for Aristotle. There’s more to life than the things on your lists.

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Todd is co-founder and director of Next Action Associates. He has been a leader in the global learning and development and talent management community for more than 20 years. His coaching and seminar experience includes work with senior executives and teams at Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Schneider Electric, UK Government agencies, and Discovery Communications. More about Todd

The occasional thud you may have been hearing in the neighbourhood lately isn’t the sound of huge falling conkers but the sound of credit card statements hitting people’s mats. Yes – all that holiday fun coming home to roost. The flights, the hotel and that crazy tequila night at Pedro’s…

Estimates suggest we owe nearly £70 billion on credit cards in the UK, and part of this can be explained by the ease and invisibility of this kind of spending. There was a time when it was simple to tell when you’d hit the limits of your funds and needed to go home – it was when you reached into your pocket and pulled out lint instead of cash.

Plastic changed that, removing the visible, physical feedback loop of cold hard cash and reducing the psychological pain of parting with actual money. Since then, contactless technology has fuelled the growth in consumer debt even further, according to the Bank of England. It was recently the 10 year anniversary of contactless in the UK and it now accounts for over half of all payments under £30. A mere flick of the wrist and the next round of drinks or shiny thing in the shop window is yours, and, importantly, the visible paper trail of receipts starts to dry up, too.

For many people, the invisibility of work commitments creates a similar kind of problem. If the true extent of your overall workload is unclear because much of it is hidden or forgotten, then it’s hard to say no to new commitments.

There’s no sign that the onslaught is going to abate any time soon, either. Recent evidence in HR magazine shows that the expectations of businesses are higher than ever for employees to work longer hours, do regular overtime and check emails at the weekend.

And guess what? The transactional tools are often contactless and frictionless here, too, increasing the ease with which ‘commitment debt’ can be racked up. Think how much easier it is for someone to send you an email asking you to do something than it is for them to actually sit with you and ask face-to-face.

The world of work won’t lose sleep if you keep getting squeezed, stressed and blindsided. The question is whether you will.

One of the ways that the GTD methodology helps you keep your head in the face of such pressures is because it provides a complete inventory of your commitments. A recent survey which compared people who habitually use GTD with people who don’t showed that 69% of the non-users tended to underestimate their workload and take on more than they can handle.

The existence of the complete inventory of a GTD system provides a feedback loop on the overall state of play which informs decisions about how much new stuff can be done. Whether you’re up to neck in debts or deadlines, that perspective is vital if you want to make better day-to-day decisions about what to take on.

That’s why debt charities recommend keeping track of day-to-day spending, for example by demanding those contactless payment receipts. Maintaining perspective is also the reason that Christmas clubs exist and have worked well for generations. Putting aside a chunk of money each week eventually means that Christmas shopping can be enjoyed rather than feared. The approach translates a clear perspective on financial commitments into simple week-to-week savings actions for those who need a bit of a hand with control.

Consistent capture and regular review. Visibility is the first step towards control because you can’t control what you can’t see. Tracking your commitments matters, whether it’s keeping hold of your receipts or consistently clarifying your emails. Your money or your life.

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Miles arrived back in the UK in 1999 having spent the ’90s working in corporate language training in Italy and Japan. He then started working in university IT service management in the north of England and held roles in e-learning, project management and training and development before becoming responsible for delivery of IT help, support and guidance at the UK’s 4th largest university in 2011. Miles is qualified as a certified trainer and a Senior Associate of Next Action Associates, promoting GTD in the North of England. More about Miles