What Does Doing Look Like?

This week, we’re looking at David Allen’s quote: “what does doing look like?”   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Email Mastery Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Episode 241 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 241 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. In his book; Getting Things Done, David Allen uses the term: “What does doing look like?”. Now for those of you who have read the book, this quote probably washed over you in the excitement of learning about contexts, next action, ticklers and someday maybes.  However, these five words connect perfectly to a common issue many people face. We know we need to do something, and we have a reasonable idea of what the finished something is, but we are not clear on what we need to do in order to accomplish it. This results in tasks that are unclear or seemingly too large to do, and we end up stalling and postponing the task.  So, this week, we’re going to look at this and see where we can get some clarity. And that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.  This week’s question comes from Joseph. Joseph asks, Hi Carl, I find I am avoiding doing a lot of my tasks because I am not sure what exactly I need to do. I might have a task to contact someone about something, but when I sit down to do it, my mind is blank, and I procrastinate and then don’t do it. How do you make your tasks doable? Hi Joseph, thank you for your question.  That’s a good question, and it reminded me of David Allen's quote about knowing what doing looks like.  Essentially this means when you write a task, you need to be very clear about what action needs to be taken in order to complete the task.  I see this problem a lot when people are working on listing out their core work. One of a manager’s core tasks would be to manage a team of people. But what does managing a team of people actually mean at the task level?  You will see this also with a project manager’s role. “To facilitate successful conclusions to projects and to report progress to the responsible director”. Great, but what exactly does that mean at a task level?  This is an important area for all of us when it comes to getting our work done. If we are not clear about what our roles are within the company at a task level, we will find our most important work is neglected, and that can lead to all sorts of problems with our career.  The first step to breaking these tasks down into simple, actionable steps is to look for the verbs. For instance, if you manage a team of, say, ten people, perhaps one of your roles would be to have regular meetings with your team members to see how they are getting on and to make sure they are clear about their responsibilities.  Now there are two ways of doing this. The first is to have regular recurring tasks that say: “set up a meeting with Joanne” or “set up a meeting with Joe”. These tasks are clear, and it’s obvious what you need to do.  Alternatively, you could arrange to meet with Joanne on the first Tuesday of every month and Joe on the second Tuesday. And spread out meetings with your other team members throughout the month. Fix these meetings in your calendar, and you have clear tasks. To write a blog post, I have four tasks. Plan this week’s blog post, write this week’s blog post, edit this week’s blog post and finally, post this week’s blog post. These tasks are spread out over three days.  I’ve been doing this e