Team

In this book we assume that the team wants both: high performance, because that is what it takes to be competitive in most industries these days; and health, because that is what it takes to stay that way over the long haul.

Our aim, finally, is to reduce burnout, to restore integrity, to decrease flare-ups caused by the stress of being overwhelmed, and to help leaders and teams to generate sustainable cultures of healthy high performance.

What level of performance can we sustain over time without damaging the people on the team, their relationships, or the environment?

infinite growth exists nowhere in nature without cost.

Everyone wants high performance, and everyone wants sustainable good health. The challenge comes from the tension that exists between the two. For many they are effectively opposite goals. I can have high performance, or I can have health. So pervasive is this belief that many exchange health for wealth by working in a way that gives them financial

Just as the original five steps of GTD produce both more productivity and less stress at an individual level using the same set of behaviors, there is no need for a team to do one set of things for health and a different set for performance.

“How do we perform with excellence in a way that is more human than what we’ve been doing until now?”

At a team level, we see the equivalent of “mind like water” to be something we’ve come to describe as “healthy high performance.” This is a way of working together that is not just able to keep pace with, or outrun, the competition, but to do it in a way that is sustainable—fun, even—over the longer term.

working and living with a “mind like water”: that your mind—like a pond of water—can react appropriately to what is in front of it, then return to calm, rather than constantly rehashing what has been done or fretting about the future.