The Surprising Truth About Actionable Tasks That Could Change How You Work Forever
Successful Fiction Writing = Creating + Organizing + Marketing
I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Organizing. This will be a very short blog post, but it shows you how to master one small aspect of one of the most powerful skills any writer can have—the art of getting stuff done. Most writers have far too many things on their plate. A lot of stuff doesn’t get done, and it keeps us from writing as much as we want. But there’s a way to change that….
Nothing Happens Unless You Take Action
Years ago, I came across a marketing guru who often used the phrase, “Nothing happens unless you take action.” This guy got an incredible amount of stuff done.
Getting stuff done is hard when you’re neurodivergent. I’ve struggled with this all my life. My neurodivergence is my superpower, but it’s also my anchor—both at the same time.
So I watched how this guru worked for a while, and I got better at taking action. I started getting more stuff done.
Getting stuff done requires you to break every project down into Tasks. I capitalize the word Task because I’m using it as a technical term. What is a Task?
A Task is some action you can take in a single sitting. Like editing a scene. Writing a blog post. Fixing a broken page on your website. Calling your agent. Reading a contract. And on and on. Tasks are small chunks of a large project.
Most of the things on your To-Do List are Tasks. If they’re not a Task, then they should probably be broken up into Tasks, because each Task is a step on the road towards getting stuff done. “Stuff” is amorphous. A Task is a discrete chunk of work.
But there’s a problem, and it’s the reason some Tasks sit on your To-Do List for ten years without getting done…
The Two Kinds of Tasks
There are really two kinds of Tasks we take on. One kind gets done in an afternoon. The other kind may never get done.
An Actionable Task is a Task that you have the skills and the know-how to do. This is the kind you do quickly. You would like for all your Tasks to be Actionable Tasks.
A Hard Task is a Task that you don’t have the skills or the know-how to do. This kind will sit festering on your To-Do List for years. Because you literally can’t do it.
If all your Tasks were Actionable Tasks, you would get all kinds of stuff done. But if your project has even one Hard Task on it, your project is going to stall. Possibly forever.
The only solution is to somehow convert a Hard Task into an Actionable Task. And how do you do that?
Let’s say you’ve got a Hard Task on your plate and you desperately need to get it done. Now. What are your options? You only have a few:
Converting Hard Tasks to Actionable Tasks
- Do some research to learn how to do the Task. Google is your friend here. Also YouTube. Sometimes Wikipedia has the answer.
- Ask a few friends if they know how to do the Task and can teach you.
- Find somebody who does this kind of Task for a living and hire them to do it. There is no shame in hiring out Hard Tasks that you just don’t have the time to learn how to do. We all have things we’ll never be able to do, even if we had infinite time to learn.
Please note that all of these are Actionable Tasks. You know how to do research online, so “researching a Hard Task” is an Actionable Task. You know how to talk to friends, so “asking friends for help on a Hard Task” is an Actionable Task. You know how to hire somebody to do a task, so “hiring somebody to do a Hard Task” is an Actionable Task. (It may be beyond your budget to hire them, and if that’s the case, this option is off the table.)
The key point is that you can convert any Hard Task into an Actionable Task—one that you have the skill and the know-how to do. It may be an Actionable Task that you can’t afford. If you can’t afford it, then you can’t afford it, and that may mean it’s the end of the line. There is freedom in knowing that something just can’t be done. When you know that, you can delete it from your To-Do List.
This Doesn’t Fully Solve the Procrastination Problem
Converting Hard Tasks into Actionable Tasks is a powerful skill that will change your life, once you master it. But it won’t completely eliminate procrastination from your life, because there are many reasons we procrastinate.
Having a Hard Task is only one of those reasons. It’s the one I’m focusing on today, because it’s been a big thing in my own life and it’s a big thing in a lot of writers’ lives.
So now let’s make this practical…
Homework:
- If you keep a To-Do List, take a look at it right now. Are there any Hard Tasks on it?
- Rewrite each Hard Task to be an Actionable Task—either a research Task or an “ask a friend” Task or a “hire somebody” Task.
- Never again put a Hard Task on your To-Do List. If you have a Hard Task that needs doing, always reframe it as an Actionable Task.
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