The Bearings Framework
The workbook.
The whole method on paper. Every number the software works out, you can work out here with a pen, and they will be the same numbers.
Print it double sided. There are 7 steps and it takes most people three sittings. Nothing on these pages is sent anywhere, because they are pages.
Yours to print and fill in, as many times as you like, for yourself and with anybody you are helping directly. It is not released for you to publish, adapt, or run as your own programme. The one part that is free to copy, adapt and teach commercially is The Wheel, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The licence says exactly where the line is.
If you want to run the whole method with your own clients, that is a real thing and it is being built. It needs a written standard behind it, which is not settled yet.
Three promises
- Your answer comes back first, above mine.You write down what you already think before anything else starts, and it gets sealed. Nothing reads it and nothing scores it. At the end it is printed above everything the method worked out, not underneath.
- When the four futures disagree, you get told they disagree.Averaging them out would give you one confident number and it would be worthless. If a move is good in two of the four and bad in the other two, that is the answer, and that is what you get told.
- Nobody dead gets quoted saying something they did not say.Where this borrows from someone, it names the book and describes the argument. No invented quotations anywhere, including in anything written to sell it. Every quoted line is checked before it goes out.
The four futures
Two things nobody can predict: how fast things change, and whether the systems around you keep up. Put them together and you get four versions of the next ten years. Every option later in this workbook is tagged against all four.
| The systems keep up | The systems break down | |
|---|---|---|
| Change comes slowly | Long GlideThe usual career risks, all of them a bit worse. | Grinding SqueezePay stops rising, qualifications count for less, and it grinds. |
| Change comes fast | AbundanceThings get cheap. What is scarce is meaning, and getting in. | Hard DecadeJobs go quickly, help arrives slowly, everything swings. |
The 7 steps
- 1What do you already know?
- 2Are you in a state to decide anything?
- 3What do you actually have?
- 4What matters most to you, and is that where your time actually goes?
- 5What have you ruled out without looking at it?
- 6What is being asked of you now?
- 7What will you do, and by when?
Optional, and it changes no number
What you already have
If you have taken any of these, write what you were given. In your own words, not the report's. Nothing here is scored. If you have none of them, skip this page and every number in this workbook is unchanged.
- CliftonStrengths
- Enneagram
- VIA Character Strengths
- MBTI
- DISC
- Hogan
- Predictive Index
- Big Five
- Human Design
- A previous 360
- Notes from a coach
- Your resume
Worth saying before you go on: those were measured at work, in a role, and mostly some years ago. The rest of this asks what is still true when the role is not there.
Step one
What you already know
Before anything else, and before any arithmetic. Write what you think the answer is. Nobody is going to read it and nothing in this workbook scores it. Then fold this page over, or cover it, and do not look at it again until the last sheet.
This is not a warm up. Most people turn out to have had the answer and needed it priced rather than replaced, and you cannot find that out if you write it down afterwards.
Date sealed
Step two
Are you in a state to decide anything?
A gate, not therapy. If it closes, the honest thing is to stop for today and come back. Nothing is lost by stopping.
1. How many of the last seven nights did you sleep properly?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. How far ahead can you think right now?
- Today, or in the next day or two
- Inside a week
- Inside a month
- Some time this year
- There is no deadline on it
3. Which of these are true this week?
- Waking at the same time every night
- A tightness in the chest or the throat
- Losing your temper faster than you used to
- Eating much more, or much less
- The same thought going round and round
- Nothing much feeling like anything
4. Anything you want to put down about it
The gate
If you slept properly on two nights or fewer AND the furthest you can think is today or this week, the gate is closed. Stop here for today.
That is not a failure and it is not a score. It means a decision this size should not be made from where you are this week, and that is a finding about the week rather than about you.
Step three, part one
Your week
List what you actually did last week and how many hours each took. Then score each one from 0 to 4 on three questions.
- Could software do it (A)
- 0. Nothing on the market does this today. 4. Software does this routinely, right now, for other people.
- Does someone have to answer for it (C)
- 0. Nobody has to be answerable for how this turns out. 4. A named person has to sign it, or carry the blame if it is wrong.
- Does it need a person there (P)
- 0. The value is the same whether or not a human is present. 4. It only works with a person in the room.
| What you did | Hours | A | C | P | Held | Could go |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The arithmetic, per task
raw = ( (C + P) ÷ 2 ) − ( A ÷ 2 )
Held= ( (raw + 2) ÷ 6 ) × 100
Could go= 100 − Held
And for the week
Add up ( hours × Could go ) for every row, then divide by the total hours.
That is weighted by hours on purpose. Twenty hours of something at eighty per cent matters more than one hour of something at a hundred, and an average of the scores would hide that.
This is not a prediction about your job. No public data supports predicting displacement task by task. It is a structured argument out of your own answers, and the value is that it is now written down.
Step three, part two
Your money, and what the move costs
What you could get your hands on, all in
Savings, anything you could sell this month, anything you can draw on.
What a month costs, stripped back
Not what you spend now. What it costs when everything optional is gone.
What arrives whatever happens
| What it is | Per month | Could you renegotiate it? |
|---|---|---|
Which kind of move is this?
| The move | Months | |
|---|---|---|
| Same work, same industry | 8 | |
| Same work, a different industry | 11 | |
| Different work, same industry | 13 | |
| Different work, different industry | 17 | |
| A new field, with the qualifications you already hold | 20 | |
| A new field that needs a qualification you do not hold | 28 | |
| Buying or starting something of your own | 16 |
Anything else true of you
| If this is true | Add | |
|---|---|---|
| You are 55 or over estimate | 2 | |
| You cannot move, or cannot move far estimate | 2 | |
| The work needs a licence you do not have estimate | 9 | |
| Your network has gone cold estimate | 3 | |
| You are not working right now estimate | 2 |
The arithmetic
How long the money lasts = what you could get your hands on ÷ a stripped month. Round down.
How long the move takes = the months for your move + every adjustment you ticked.
The finding = how long the money lasts − how long the move takes.
Round down rather than up, because rounding up tells you about a month you do not have.
If that came out negative
It is the normal result. Most people who do this honestly get a negative number, because eight to nine months is what a move takes and three months is what most households can cover. It is arithmetic, not a verdict on how you have lived.
What it means is that the first job is buying months rather than running a search, which is the next sheet but one.
Where the month counts come from: this framework's reading of published average job search durations for people in their late forties and fifties. Not yet checked against the published series at source, so treat them as a considered starting point rather than a citation. Everything in the adjustments table is our own estimate and is marked as one.
Step three, part three
What you do, wherever you are
Four short pieces of writing, one for each kind of situation. Then tag your own against the list. The question underneath is what survives the role being removed.
At work
A time at work you handled something well. What did you actually do?
With family
The same, at home or with people close to you.
In a crisis
Something going wrong, and what you did in it.
Left alone
Unstructured time. What do you end up doing when nobody needs anything?
Now tick every one you can see in each piece
| What you do | Work | Family | Crisis | Alone | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MakingBrings things into existence that were not there before. | |||||
| OrderingTurns a mess into something other people can work with. | |||||
| SeeingNotices what everyone else in the room has missed. | |||||
| TendingKeeps existing things and people alive and well. | |||||
| BridgingConnects people or groups that were not connected. | |||||
| DecidingMoves when the information is incomplete and others have stalled. | |||||
| HoldingStays steady, and keeps others steady, when things are not. | |||||
| QuestioningRefuses the easy answer, including their own. | |||||
| PersuadingMoves people toward something they had not considered. | |||||
| EnduringStays with the difficult past the point most people leave. | |||||
| PlayingFinds lightness and keeps it available to other people. | |||||
| TeachingHands over a capability so it outlasts them. |
Reading it
Three or more of the four: that is a constant. It is a thing you do, not a thing the job needed.
One only, and it is work: that was the role behaving, not you. Worth knowing, because it is the part people grieve hardest and it is the part that does not come with them.
Two: inconclusive. Say so rather than rounding it up. An honest blank is worth more than a manufactured result.
Step four
The Wheel
Eight parts of a life. A hundred points to share out by what each deserves, then what each actually got, then how it feels. The gap is the finding, and it is never the low score.
This one has its own sheet, because it is the free standalone instrument and it travels on its own under CC BY-SA 4.0. Print the Wheel sheet and put it in here at this point.
Step five
What you ruled out without pricing it
First, what is true of your situation
- You own the place you live in
- It is worth more than you owe on it
- You could move if you wanted to
- There is a room you could let
- Somebody else in the house brings money in
- You can reach a pension or retirement account
Anything you did not tick removes the options that need it. Those options are not greyed out, they are gone, because a list of things you are not allowed to do is not a list of options.
| The option | Needs | Months it buys | LG | GS | AB | HD | Ruled out? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cut what you spend on things you chooseWhat you could stop spending each month without anything breaking. | Anyone | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||
| Cancel a fixed cost nobody has looked at in yearsThe monthly total of the ones you would actually cancel. | Anyone | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||
| Let a room, or add somewhere to letWhat a room goes for near you, each month. | You own the place you live in; There is a room you could let | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||
| Move somewhere smaller in the same placeThe difference in what it costs you each month. | You own the place you live in; It is worth more than you owe on it | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||
| Sell, and rent insteadWhat you would clear after everything is paid off. | You own the place you live in; It is worth more than you owe on it | yes | yes | no | yes | ||
| Move somewhere cheaperThe monthly difference in what living there costs. | You could move if you wanted to | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||
| Somebody else in the house works more for a whileWhat that would add each month. | Somebody else in the house brings money in | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||
| Take work you are overqualified for, to buy timeWhat it would bring in each month, after tax. | Anyone | yes | yes | no | yes | ||
| Draw on a pension earlier than you plannedWhat you could take without a penalty that undoes it. | You can reach a pension or retirement account | no | yes | no | yes | ||
| Sell something you have been keepingWhat it would fetch, honestly, this month. | Anyone | yes | yes | yes | yes |
The four columns are LG Long Glide, GS Grinding Squeeze, AB Abundance, HD Hard Decade.
Ordering it
Work out what each one buys you in months from your own stripped month, then sort by months bought and nothing else. Not by how sensible it is, how reversible it is, or how many futures it holds in. Those are on the row and none of them moves the order.
Ranking by a blend of them would be this workbook having an opinion, and you would have to trust a weighting you cannot see.
Step six
What is being asked of you now?
Not what you want from life. The other way round, which is a harder question and a more useful one.
Which of these is closest to what has gone wrong?
- There is simply too much of itRest and a boundary are the right first move here, and they will help.
- You are asked to do things you do not believe inRest will not touch this one. A holiday returns you to the same ask.
- You have no say in how the work is doneRest will not touch this one either. What changed is who decides.
- The work goes unseenRest will not touch this. Being seen is not something you can do alone.
- The people around you have goneRest will not touch this. What is missing is other people.
What do you want to make or change?
Who do you want to be in the room with?
What do you want to stand for?
A direction, in your own words
Separate lines, not one sentence. It does not have to resolve and it must not become a slogan.
I do not know yet
That is a finished answer to this step, not an unfinished one. Tick it, carry on, and come back to the page when something has changed.
I do not know yet.
Step seven
What will you do, and by when?
Before you write anything here, go back and read what you sealed on the first sheet. That goes above this, not below it.
What you already knew, copied back
One thing, inside seven days
By
One relationship to go back into
One thing to take out
These are three repetitions, not three tasks
There is nothing to tick off, on purpose. A task completes once. A repetition cuts a channel, and the channel is the point.
After
The thirty days
Knowing the answer has never been enough, and the reason is architectural rather than moral. Understanding sits in the part of the brain that drops out first under pressure, so you can be completely clear at eleven in the morning and run the old pattern at six that evening. Under load your brain reaches for the most practiced route, because practiced means it worked before.
Your brain builds whichever road gets the most traffic.
- The SettlingTwo minutes on the body, before anything hardSit. Work up from your feet and notice where you are holding something. Do not fix it. Naming it is the whole exercise.
- The RefusalSay the option out loud once a weekTake the thing you ruled out and say what it would actually cost, out loud, to one person or to nobody. Do not commit to it. Just stop flinching from it.
- The AskOne hour a week on the thing with no returnSomething you would do if nobody paid you and nobody saw it. An hour, protected, in the calendar like anything else.
- The PathTen minutes in front of something bigA sky, a horizon, water, a tree older than you. No phone, no music, no plan for the time.
Around week three you will slip
Almost everybody does, and almost everybody reads it as proof the whole thing was nonsense. What matters is not whether you slip. It is whether you notice you are mid pattern instead of arriving at the bottom of it. That noticing is the new road carrying traffic.
Thirty days on
The Return
Put the date in a calendar now. Nobody is going to remind you, because nobody has your address.
Come back on
What did you actually do?
The thing itself, not how it went. If the answer is nothing, write nothing. That is a real answer and it is the one this was built to catch.
What happened?
What followed from it, including the parts that were worse.
What moved?
Anything. A number, a conversation you had been avoiding, or the fact that something you were sure about turned out not to be true.
If the answer to the first one is nothing
Write nothing. That is the single most useful thing you can put here, it is the answer this whole method was built to catch, and nobody is keeping score.