Previous posts in this series:
Understanding Executive Function: What It Is and Why It Matters
The Zoom Out, Zoom In Dance: A Foundation for Better Productivity
The Daily Aiming Ritual: Putting Prioritization into Practice
Time Management for Planning: Aligning Your Schedule with Natural Rhythms
From Alliance to Action
In the previous post you learned about the alliance model; the notion that your mind is best thought of as having multiple parts, each with distinct strengths and weaknesses. If you haven't yet read that earlier post 'Parts Work for Executive Functioning' please do so now, as what I'll be discussing below won't make as much sense without that background fresh in your mind.
Right now I'd like you to consider the implication of the alliance model, especially as it helps you think about how to motivate yourself. Motivating yourself to get things done is a critically important part of productivity, easily as important as planning itself, and one we have not yet discussed. Let's fix that now.
The alliance model makes clear that the cortical part of your mind - your rational, planning-oriented parts that excel at predicting what is likely to happen in the future so that you can best see how to avoid pitfalls and complete your goals (what I call 'navigating') - is also quite bad at helping you motivate. You can have a good idea regarding what you need to do but that doesn't help you want to do it. The model also shows that the affective parts of your mind - the emotional and appetitive driven parts of your mind - excel at motivating you. It's very easy to eat when you're hungry, and to run away when you feel afraid. These same affective parts, however, are quite bad at navigating. These emotional parts of your mind want what they want very intensely and they want it right now. However, they simply are not built to think about consequences.
Think of what this means for getting your work done. You might have a perfect Daily Aiming Ritual, clear priorities, and a well-organized task list, yet still find yourself struggling to maintain productive momentum throughout your day - because you just don't feel like doing the work! You can have a great plan (created mostly by your cognitive part of self) and still be dead in the water if your affective parts of self aren't aligned with getting your plan done.
You've probably experienced this disconnect: knowing exactly what you should do, having a clear plan, but somehow just... not doing it. That's not a willpower problem - it's an alliance problem. This is why the alliance model is so important. It is only when you're able to form an alliance between your cognitive and affective parts of self such that what you plan to do is also what you want to do that you can be productive.
The alliance between your navigating and motivating systems isn't just a nice idea - it's the practical foundation for every transition, every moment of sustained focus, and every time you successfully follow through on your intentions. And it's in the transitions between activities where this alliance gets tested most.
The Reality of Circular Productivity
Most productivity frameworks assume a linear progression: plan → execute → complete → plan next task. But real productivity is circular and dynamic. You're constantly moving between different phases: from planning to execution, from one task to another, from focused work to necessary breaks, from individual work to collaborative demands, from execution back to planning when you need to reassess priorities.
I call these shifts between different phases and activities your 'transitions'. Here are some concrete examples of important transitions you may experience frequently: The shift from your morning planning session into working on your first task. The switch from finishing one project to starting another. The pause when you get interrupted and need to safely set aside complex work so that you can best pick it back up later. The times when you need to step back from getting work done to reassess whether you're still working on the right priorities.
Realistic productivity is more circular in shape than linear. In actual practice, you might start out planning in the morning, execute for an hour, need to pause for an interruption, resume execution, then switch to a different type of task, step back to reassess priorities, execute again, take a break for energy restoration, and then plan again for tomorrow. Each one of these transitions requires different internal coordination and different environmental supports if they are to happen smoothly and successfully.
When you think about this circular reality, transitions become quite crucial - they are the connective tissue that holds your entire productivity system together. You can have perfect planning skills and perfect execution skills, but if you can't smoothly navigate between them, your system will break down at the connection points.
Introducing the Embodied Executive Function Support (EEFS) Framework
Over the past nine posts, I've been systematically building what I call the Embodied Executive Function Support framework (EEFS for short). With EEFS, I'm hoping to teach you a complete approach to understanding and solving productivity challenges that recognizes the fundamental relationship between your cognitive abilities and your physical-emotional experience.
Many productivity systems are built on solid theoretical foundations, for instance, Getting Things Done (GTD)'s insights about cognitive load and open loops, Deep Work's research with regard to attention and flow states, and Atomic Habits' behavioral psychology principles. What makes EEFS different is that it flows from my background as a trauma therapist who also works extensively with neurodivergent individuals, looking at productivity through that particular professional lens.
My clinical work has taught me to pay close attention to how different internal systems coordinate with each other, and how people manage to navigate between their different internal states. When you understand that having multiple, sometimes conflicting internal systems is actually how brains are designed to work - not a bug, but a feature - and that different parts of your brain are constantly coordinating (and sometimes competing) for control of your attention and behavior, then transitions become obviously crucial and important. They're the moments where your internal coordination either works smoothly or breaks down.
What links neurodiversity and trauma together are internal regulation challenges, by which I mean difficulties affected people have getting stuck in states that aren't context-appropriate and where they struggle to shift from one problematic state to another more functional one. Both groups also often experience conflicts among their parts-of-self more noticeably than do neurotypical people. Internal regulation challenges are fundamentally transition problems. When I apply this clinical understanding to productivity, I see that transitions are the connective tissue that enables coherent productive behavior to happen.
Why Transitions Come First: The Clinical Insight Applied to Productivity
You might be wondering: "Wait - shouldn't you talk about how to stay focused and avoid distractions first before discussing transitions?" My answer to that question is no, and here's why.
The first posts in this series (1-8) are about planning. I can't get from planning to execution (where I'm heading in later posts) without first carefully considering how people transition between planning and execution. And for the people with internal regulation challenges that EEFS seeks to help, whether due to neurodiversity, trauma, or just the normal complexities of being human, transitions are where systems most often break down.
Many people can focus intensely once they get started - sometimes even hyperfocusing to the point of losing track of time - but struggle enormously with starting and stopping tasks, or switching between activities. This suggests the problem isn't always attention capacity, but rather often ends up being a breakdown of the internal coordination system during transitions. For example, you might work productively for hours, then lose an entire afternoon because you couldn't smoothly transition from your completed task to the next important one. The breakdown happened between tasks, not during tasks - at the moments where your different internal systems needed to coordinate a handoff.
Transitions between states are where your internal parts-of-self often come into conflict most visibly and painfully, for instance, the part that wants to keep working versus the part that knows it's time to switch, the part that resists starting versus the part that wants to make progress. From an EEFS trauma-informed productivity lens, learning to navigate these sorts of parts conflicts skillfully becomes the foundation for all other productivity work.
So rather than jumping straight into discussion of execution challenges, I'm going to first thoroughly address the transition systems that makes sustained execution possible. I'll then move on to discuss attention management and procrastination (which by the way are also internal coordination problems at their core).
If you're in crisis mode right now experiencing severe procrastination or attention difficulties, you're welcome to jump ahead to the posts that address those directly when they're published: Post 17 on Attention Management, Post 24 on Understanding Procrastination (including a complete 5-step Procrastination Recovery Ritual), Post 25 on Initiation Threshold Management, and Post 26 on working with ADHD reward systems. But if you want to build sustainable systems that address root causes rather than just managing symptoms, the transition foundation I'm building will make those advanced techniques much more effective.
The Transition Challenge
Now that I've explained why EEFS focuses on transitions first, let's dig into what makes transitions so challenging in the first place.
From the EEFS point of view, most productivity advice fails because it assumes seamless switching between activities, and such seamless switching just isn't a reasonable assumption. The reality is that every transition involves coordinating multiple brain systems and internal parts. Transitions aren't just cognitive shifts - they're whole-system changes that involve your attention networks, nervous system state, and the coordination of your different parts-of-self, each with different needs and concerns.
The Productivity Freeway: A Complete Framework
Given how complex and varied these transition challenges can be, I find it useful to think about them through a visual metaphor. A good way to think about productivity is to think of it like a literal road trip you might take in a car on the highway. Just as highway driving involves multiple types of navigation - entering the freeway, changing lanes, taking exits, and finding scenic overlooks for rest and perspective - productive work requires different types of transitions throughout your day.
Just as you don't drive the same way when merging onto a highway as when cruising in the same lane, you also don't approach starting a new task the same way you approach switching between familiar ones.
The Four Essential Transitions
The freeway metaphor breaks down into four essential transitions. During any productive day, you might encounter instances of these four fundamental transition types:
1. On-Ramps: Getting onto the Productivity Freeway
This is your Daily Aiming Ritual from Post 6 which sets you up to perform deliberately chosen focused work tasks. Just as merging onto a freeway requires checking mirrors, finding the right speed, and coordinating with traffic flow, entering productive work requires coordinating your internal parts team so that all are ready and as willing as possible to engage the day's work. On-ramp transitions sets up the alliance between your planning and executing systems to best enable your productivity.
2. Lane Changes: Task-to-Task Transitions
These are the transitions you make when you switch between tasks on your Daily Todo List, smoothly shifting from one task focus to another while maintaining your momentum. Just like you check your mirrors when changing lanes, switching tasks requires you to orient yourself: recognizing what you've completed, identifying what comes next, and confirming that your next planned task still makes sense given current conditions.
3. Exit Ramps: Pausing Complex Work
Sometimes you need to stop working on something before it's finished, for instance when interruptions occur, when your energy shifts, or when a scheduled transition arrives like a meeting you can't not show up for. Exit ramp transitions assist you in safely pausing mid-task while preserving your mental state for easy re-entry back into the incomplete task later on.
4. Rest Stops and Scenic Overlooks: Stepping Back for Big Picture
Occasionally, you need to step back from the flow of execution to gain perspective, for instance, transitioning from executing mode back into planning mode when you recognize that your daily todo list plan has become stale. This transition is akin to pulling over at a rest stop or scenic overlook while driving so that you can catch your breath and make a new plan. This transition allows you to rise above the immediate tasks on your plate so that you can see how those tasks and all the others that might need your attention are best sorted and organized so that you can make an effective course correction.
The Navigation Principle
Each transition type serves a different function in sustainable productivity. Just as driving requires different techniques for merging, lane changes, and exits, smooth productivity transitions require preparation, awareness, and appropriate technique for the specific situation you're facing. Forcing transitions or trying to rush through them abruptly often creates internal conflict and system breakdown.
The key insight is that transitions work best when they support your brain's natural switching patterns rather than when you try to override them through willpower.
Your Brain's Traffic Control System: The Salience Network
To understand why this approach works, let's look at what those natural switching systems actually are. Your brain has a sophisticated system for managing transitions, centered on what neuroscientists call the Salience Network. Understanding how this system works will help you appreciate why the careful transition management I'm describing supports rather than fights your brain's natural patterns.
What the Salience Network Does
The Salience Network acts like air traffic control for your attention. It's specialized for detecting when transitions are needed and coordinating the handoff between different brain systems. Here's what it does:
Detection phase: It notices when your current mental state no longer matches your current needs - when you're planning but need to execute, when you're focused on one task but another task has become more important, or when you're executing but need to step back and reassess.
Switching phase: Once it detects the need for change, it coordinates the transition between different attention networks - from internally focused planning mode to externally focused execution mode, or from one type of focused work to another.
Integration phase: It helps your new mental state stabilize with support from your internal alliance of parts.
How This Works in Practice
The Salience Network operates as an interrupt system that rapidly identifies what needs attention and initiates responses. It works in partnership with the two main networks you learned about in Post 2's "Zoom Out, Zoom In Dance": the Default Mode Network (DMN) that supports planning and big-picture thinking, and the Task-Positive Network (TPN) that enables focused execution.
Think of it this way: your DMN excels at planning and reflection, while your TPN excels at sustained focus and task execution. Meanwhile, your Salience Network excels at monitoring for when it's time to switch between these modes. These systems work in alliance - your interrupt system (Salience Network) handles the monitoring so your planning and execution systems can focus without constantly checking whether it's time to switch.
This is why forcing transitions through willpower often backfires. When you override your Salience Network's natural timing, you create internal conflict between your planning system, your execution system, and your switching system - rather than letting them work together as they're designed to do.
Individual Differences and Timing
People's transition systems vary significantly. Some have more sensitive switching systems that notice transition needs quickly, while others have switching systems that prefer longer periods of sustained focus. Some people's networks coordinate smoothly with minimal effort, while others need more deliberate support for clean handoffs between mental states.
This variation means there's no one-size-fits-all approach to managing transitions. What works smoothly for your colleague or friend might feel forced or unnatural for your particular brain. The techniques need to be customized to work with your individual "settings" rather than against them.
This is why understanding your own patterns becomes essential for sustainable productivity. You need to discover when your system naturally wants to switch, when it resists switching, what conditions support your smoothest transitions, and what approaches feel collaborative rather than combative with your internal coordination systems. The goal is to work with your brain's particular design rather than trying to force it into someone else's pattern.
For readers interested in deeper neuroscience: The Salience Network involves primarily the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. You can find detailed explanations of attention network interactions in the Wikipedia articles on "Salience Network" and "Attention Network".
Parts Work in Transitions: Common Process Patterns
Now let's explore how your internal parts show up during different types of transitions. I'll describe common patterns that emerge when switching between activities, but remember that your particular constellation of parts will be unique to you.
Internal Transition Dynamics
Completion vs. Progress tensions: You might notice one part of you wants to finish everything perfectly before transitioning, while another part feels urgency to move forward. This tension creates internal debates about when something is "done enough" to merit switching focus.
Comfort vs. Challenge dynamics: Some parts may prefer staying with familiar tasks where you feel competent, while others seek novelty and stimulation from new activities. This can contribute to resistance either to leaving comfortable tasks or to starting challenging ones.
Control vs. Flow conflicts: Parts that want to maintain tight control over outcomes might resist the uncertainty of transitions, while parts that trust the process feel comfortable with natural timing and adaptation.
Transition-Specific Examples
Let me offer some examples of how these patterns might show up, but remember: your internal team will have its own unique personalities and concerns. These are just examples to help you start noticing your own patterns.
On-Ramp Conflicts: You might notice something like what some of my clients have described as a 'Planning part' that wants more time to prepare and organize, while at the same time a 'Get-Going part' causes them to feel impatient to start making progress. The alliance approach involves understanding what each of these parts needs so that they might arrive at compromise. Perhaps the Planning part needs five minutes to review priorities while the Get-Going part needs assurance that planning time is bounded and won't go on indefinitely.
Lane Change Tensions: Common patterns include internal debates between what some might call a 'Finishing' part that wants to complete current tasks thoroughly and a 'Switching' part that's ready to take on something new. Meeting the legitimate needs of these different parts can create space for compromise and forward movement. Perhaps the Finishing part needs to complete just one more component or clearly document current progress. Once those needs are met, that Finishing part could agree to gracefully step aside so that the Switching part can engage with the new task without internal resistance.
Exit Ramp Resistance: Many people notice tension arising between parts that hate leaving things incomplete and parts that recognize the need to respond to interruptions or energy changes that require pausing work. Here, the alliance approach might involve creating detailed 'state notes' that satisfy the part that needs completion while honoring the part that recognizes optimal timing for breaks.
Scenic Overlook Challenges: You might also notice internal conflict between 'Doing' parts that want to keep making progress, and 'Reflecting' parts that feel the need to step back and make sure you're still working on what is most important. Such parts often have different understandings of what constitutes productive time use. Meeting both parts' needs might involve the Doing part agreeing to a brief, time-bounded reflection period - perhaps 10 minutes to review priorities - while the Reflecting part commits to returning to execution afterward rather than getting lost in endless planning. This way, the Reflecting part gets its essential perspective check, and the Doing part maintains forward momentum.
Alliance Approach to Transition Conflicts
The examples above sound straightforward, but you're probably wondering: "How exactly do I figure out what my parts need?", and "How do I actually negotiate with them?" Most of us have learned to handle internal conflicts by trying to force one side to win, for instance using willpower to override resistance, pushing through when parts of us want to stop, or forcing ourselves to switch when parts of us want to keep going.
Rather than trying to force transitions through willpower, the parts work approach I'm teaching here involves a different process that involves you (your most adult, most cognitive part of self) functioning as skillful mediator:
Recognition: Noticing the internal tension without judgment. "I notice I'm feeling pulled in different directions about whether to keep working or switch tasks."
Curiosity: Understanding what each part needs during transitions. "What is the part that wants to keep working concerned about? What does the part that wants to switch need?"
Negotiation: Finding transition approaches that honor different parts' concerns. "Can we finish this section and then switch? Can we set a clear stopping point that feels complete?"
Alliance: Creating transition rituals that support rather than override internal needs. The specific rituals I'll cover in the next three posts are designed to help different parts coordinate rather than conflict.
What Internal Tensions Do You Notice?
Accordingly, as you read through these examples, I hope you will be asking yourself, "What resonates here with my experience?" What internal tensions have you noticed when trying to transition between activities? Which transitions do you tend to avoid or rush through? How do different parts of you respond to different types of transitions?
Transition Patterns and Personal Rhythms
Individual Transition Signatures
Just as people have different optimal work rhythms, everyone has different transition patterns:
Transition sensitivity: Some people need more support for smooth switching, while others transition more naturally. There's no right or wrong - just different nervous systems with different needs.
Energy-dependent patterns: Your transition needs are not static but instead change based on your transient energy levels and nervous system state. When you're well-rested and regulated, transitions might feel effortless. When you're tired or stressed, the same transitions might require more support.
Environmental context variation: Different environments and situations affect your transition capacity. Transitions at home might feel different from transitions at work, and transitions during busy periods might need different support than transitions during calm periods.
Common Transition Challenges
Transition avoidance: Using either perseveration (staying stuck) or rapid switching to avoid uncomfortable transitions. This might look like remaining in planning mode when it's time to execute, continuing to work on low-priority tasks to avoid starting challenging ones, or constantly checking email and social media whenever deep work is required. Whether through staying put or constantly moving, the underlying pattern is avoiding the discomfort of making a genuine transition to what's actually needed.
Transition overwhelm: Too many required switches creating system overload. When your day has too many meetings, too many different types of tasks, or too many interruptions, your transition capacity gets exhausted.
Transition timing: Trying to switch when internal systems aren't ready. This might involve forcing yourself to start working when your parts need more settling time, or forcing yourself to continue working when your system is ready for a break.
The Alliance Solution
Instead of forcing transitions through willpower, EEFS emphasizes your creation of supportive transition rituals that can help facilitate smoother transitions. These rituals honor the legitimate concerns of your different parts during transitions while building environmental and procedural supports that make transitions easier for your whole internal system.
The goal isn't to eliminate transition friction entirely; that's not possible as some friction is natural, unavoidable and even healthy. The goal is to reduce unnecessary friction and to support your system's natural transition rhythms.
Integration with Your Planning Foundation
Building on What You've Already Learned
Your Daily Aiming Ritual from Post 6 serves as your primary transition ritual on-ramp to productivity. The morning planning session you've established creates the foundational alliance between your planning and executing systems for each day.
Your task analysis skills from Post 4 help you recognize when transitions will be needed within larger projects. Your prioritization framework from Post 5 guides which lane changes are worth making when competing demands arise. Your time management structure from Post 8 provides the schedule framework within which your transitions will occur.
All of the foundational work you've learned from Posts 1-8 makes the transition system I'll be explaining in Posts 10-15 much more effective.
Why Transitions Matter for Your Existing System
Even with perfect planning, sustained productivity depends on smooth execution. And smooth execution depends on navigating the spaces between planned activities as skillfully as you navigate the activities themselves.
Most productivity breakdowns don't happen during focused work - they happen in the gaps between focused work, when you finish one task but struggle to start the next one, when you get interrupted and can't find your way back to deep work, or when you realize you need to step back and reassess but can't shift out of doing mode.
The transition rituals I'll cover in Posts 11-13 address these specific breakdown points, creating bridges that connect your planning foundation to sustained execution.
What's Coming Next: Your Transition Toolkit
In the next three posts, you'll learn specific rituals for each type of transition:
Post 11 (Task Orienting Ritual): The specific techniques I recommend for facilitating smooth lane changes between tasks. The Task Orienting Ritual helps you complete one focused task cleanly while preparing your internal system to work on a new focused task, maintaining your momentum while ensuring nothing important gets lost during the switch.
Post 12 (Task Interruption Ritual): How to use exit ramps safely when your work gets interrupted. The Task Interruption Ritual helps you pause complex work in a way that preserves your progress and mental state, making it much easier for you to resume focused work later.
Post 13 (Reflection Ritual): Using scenic overlooks to transition back to planning mode. The Reflection Ritual helps you step out of execution mode when it's time for you to reassess your priorities, course-correct, or shift back into bigger-picture planning.
How the System Works Together
Each of these rituals addresses a specific transition type using the alliance model you learned in Post 9. All of the rituals share common elements: your recognition of internal states, your preparation for the transition, your skillful execution of the switch, and your settling into the new focus with your parts aligned around the new activity.
The complete system creates sustainable productivity rhythm rather than forced performance. Instead of pushing through transitions with willpower and hoping for the best, you'll have specific, effective techniques that honor your internal parts' legitimate concerns, work with your brain's natural switching patterns, and clear the way for getting work done.
Getting Started: Simple Transition Awareness
Before diving into the specific techniques described in posts 11-13, take some time first to develop your awareness of your current transition patterns. Your observations will become the foundation for customizing and personalizing the specific rituals ahead.
Simple Transition Observation Exercise
When do transitions feel smooth vs. difficult?
Notice which transition types happen easily and which ones create internal friction and resistance. Is it easier to start work or to stop work? Is it easier to switch between similar tasks or different types of tasks?
What internal tensions arise when switching between activities?
Pay attention to your parts (the internal voices, feelings and physical sensations) that show up during your transitions. What concerns do your different parts seem to have?
Which transitions do you tend to avoid or rush through?
Notice your habitual patterns. Do you procrastinate on starting certain types of work? Do you have trouble stopping work at appropriate times? Do you avoid taking breaks? Do you have difficulty stepping away from and then resuming complex work?
How do different parts of you respond to different types of transitions?
Be curious regarding your internal team's transition preferences. Which parts of you like routine vs. variety? Which parts need closure vs. flexibility?
There isn't any need to change anything just yet. In fact, if you feel a need to rush right now, notice that impulse as one of your parts. Just develop your awareness of your parts and their impulses. This observation practice will help you recognize your patterns as they reoccur, help you identify which transition rituals will be most valuable for your specific system, and give you clues as to how to best personalize those rituals so that you can get your best results.
Looking Ahead
The journey through Posts 10-15 will give you a complete transition system that works with your brain's natural rhythms rather than against them. Each ritual integrates the parts work foundation you learned in Post 9, helping you build stronger internal alliances during your transitions, the moments that matter most for maintaining your sustained productivity.
This isn't about forcing yourself to be more efficient - it's about recognizing, understanding and facilitating the conditions that will help your natural productivity flow unimpeded.
In my next post, I'll dive into what is probably the most common transition you'll make each day: the lane change between completed tasks. You'll learn the Task Orienting Ritual, a simple but powerful technique that helps your whole internal system shift smoothly from one focused task to another while maintaining your momentum and the alliance you've worked so hard to create.
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This is the tenth in a series exploring executive function and productivity. In my next post, I'll explain the "Task Orienting Ritual: Mastering Task-to-Task Transitions" – the specific techniques for smoothly switching between completed tasks while maintaining momentum and ensuring nothing important gets lost in the transition.