Some call it work - life balance. It could be today’s holy grail for many of us as we try and make sense of who we are and what we want to give and get from the world.

For me, I have relentlessly pursued finding my own balance. I know that I don’t yet have it. I know that when I do my job to meet my own exacting standards, there is no time for anything else in my life in any meaningful way.

I have been on a 25 year mission it seems to prove something to the world, or perhaps myself, that I can achieve when others wrote me off. I have been career minded and driven to succeed and when I have had some success, it has only made me drive harder, pushing myself relentlessly.

In the past this has also meant that sometimes my family have taken second place in my day to day. I am disappointed in myself for letting that happen.

I know that wasn’t right, not what I wanted and certainly my open heart surgery has brought home to me what is really important.

So here I am again. Ready to press the reset button (or should that be the reboot button?!) but ready to do it right this time.

My experience has shown that this is not a one time action and I go it to this knowing that I will need to constantly adjust and reset in the months and years to come. So I put it to you too, to set clear expectation for yourself before embarking on this exercise to take control. Go in to this with the mindset that you may find some techniques and some tools that will help initially but that will need attention and potentially adjusting at some point down the line.

I am going to share my strategies for taking control on this site which are in turn based on the proven and widely accepted GTD (Getting Things Done) principles of Dave Allen. On the key steps in the GTD process and perhaps the most important to achieve long term success, is the point where you “reflect” on your work to do and adjust.

So I see this as my own “reflection” point, not strictly in my GTD process but more as part of my taking control shift that I need to do as I get closer to returning to work after surgery.

The content that follows will introduce the principles of Allen’s GTD but I will provide context and real life scenarios to enable those new to this approach to potentially understand it but more critically to use these examples to see if it could work for you to take control and achieve your own balance.