In a perfect world, we would start our day by going through a neatly ordered list of tasks. We'd have a few hours of deep work concentration to cross off half of them.

Then we'd have a leisurely lunch with colleagues and go back to whittling down the list until the last task was completed at precisely 5:30 pm. A sense of satisfaction would fill us as we leave (or disconnect) for the day and hop a ride to happy hour on a magical unicorn.

But this is the real world, where last-minute meetings that could have been an email fill calendars. Where colleagues forget to finish their tasks and drop them on your plate as they set off for holidays.

And where urgent deadlines suddenly derail your list of tasks for the day, causing you to push them to the next one and the one after that.

Over the last 20 years, the world of work has shifted significantly. The rise of tech companies brought with them flat hierarchies, cushy employee perks, and playground-style open-office concepts.

Along with that came a hustle culture aimed at getting the most out of every workday. Work tech platforms, like Slack and Trello, have focused on streamlining communication and productivity, while generative AI tools, like ChatGPT and Midjourney, have promised to help us do more in less time by automating tasks.

To deal with an increasing influx of notifications and deadlines, a flurry of personal productivity hacks, like the zero inbox and the pomodoro technique, came in and out of fashion.

While these changes may sound like improvements to the workplace, the last few years have also seen a steep rise in cases of burnout across the globe. Here in the Netherlands, one in five workers are reported to be struggling with burnout, leading to 11 million days per year of employee absenteeism. According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, employee stress is at a record high and has been steadily increasing since 2009.

This begs the question, with all the tools, platforms, and hacks aimed at getting tasks done faster…

Why are we still unable to get things done?

Since productivity guru David Allen published Getting Things Done in 2001, it's been translated into 28 languages and sold over 1.5 million copies.

Through his book and coaching sessions, he taught workers from C-level to entry-level how to “empty their heads” so they could focus on… getting things done. As Allen put it:

“Stop using your head as an office — it's a really shitty one. Your head is for having ideas, not for hanging on to them.”

Twenty-three years and hundreds of in-house coaching sessions later, Allen realised there was something missing.

Last week, he and coauthor Edward Lamont released a new book aimed at tackling, not only the symptoms but what could be the source of the global workplace stress epidemic. It's called Getting things done… with others.

The truth is, no matter how much you set yourself up for optimum productivity, it will only be effective if your team is also set up to work together optimally. This really comes down to management.

It's a manager's job to take teams of wide-ranging personalities, work styles, and skills and set them up for high performance. The problem is, startups are often filled with team leads who are inexperienced and, due to a lack of resources, don't receive any sort of training.

“A lot of new managers became managers because they were good programmers. Instead of focusing on how to do their work, there's a learning curve when trying to figure out how to manage the work of others,” says Allen.

You can't change people but you can change the rules

One big issue, Allen believes, is that managers need to be setting standards and principles for their teams. For example, how late can meetings start? When should team members not be disturbed?

“We have two whole chapters on principles and standards because you're not going to change people's personalities. A lot of the time it's the simple mechanics that are getting screwed up and preventing the team from doing what a team is really about,” Allen says.

Setting standards is important not only for guiding people towards common practices but also for guiding people on what to do when things go wrong.

“If I make a commitment to you and then things change and I'm not going to be able to make that commitment — how comfortable am I talking to you and renegotiating our agreement instead of simply letting it fall through the cracks? That's where a lot of burnout comes from, it's not so much feeling overwhelmed, it's the ambient anxiety that melts up internally for most people. All that stuff can bleed into everything else if it doesn't get handled properly.”

Want to learn more about building healthy, high-performance teams?

Join David Allen at TNW 2024 as he takes the stage to discuss the principles behind effective team management and insights from his latest book, Team: Getting Things Done With Others. Expect real-world strategies, not just theories, for enhancing team productivity and collaboration.

Register here for a business pass, investor pass or startup packages (Bootstrap & Scaleup).