Can you take action on your "To Do List"

After yesterdays post about planning and the types of planing I received an email about an important part of any of these four planning steps from Sue. Sue is a very well organized, get it done lady who manages a very bust schedule. It does not surprise me at all that Sue is a planner and that she prescribes to the habit when planning.

Most people (myself included) have a tendency of making "to do lists" that are not lists of action items, but are really lists of small projects. For instance, "Steve's birthday" is not an action item. "Buy gift for Steve, bake cake, pick up card, and invite .... for dinner on Steve's birthday" are action items. When making lists of things I want to accomplish this month, (your grid of 4) I list projects. Then, for my weekly and daily lists, I make sure the items are individual action items and NOT projects. Projects- even if they are very small with only a couple of action items, (like the birthday) are much easier to skip on a daily basis because they cannot be acted upon without further breaking down."

Determining an actionable next step is vital to having a plan that will work for you, and this was going to be the subject for one of my posts. So lets tackle it now.

The key words here are actionable next step. An actionable next step is the task that can stand alone and has it's own start and finish. It is something that you can go out, get done and mark it off your list. Sue gives a great example of this in her email, but lets look at another example.

In the Boy Scouts we want to make sure that every kid has the opportunity to join a quality Scouting program, so we are frequently working on starting new units. Many times I will see the following action item on a weekly or daily plan:

Start new unit at Franklin Elementary School

This is important but it is not the actionable next step. By having this on the weekly or daily plan it does not provide specific direction to what exactly needs to happen. This item probably has 30 or more actionable next steps that need to happen. So the challenge is this - drill down into non-actionable items on your task list, to find your real tasks that need to be done. By identifying the specific actionable next steps, you can plan an appropriate number of these steps in a logical order into your plan. You will be taking the right action each day that will lead to the completion of the larger project, and you will have a lot more fun marking off each item that you have completed towards the larger goal.

What are some actionable next steps for starting this unit? If this were going to be on my to do list I would start with some of these.

• Set appointment to meet with school principal
• Meet with school principal to discuss Scouting
• Select date for recruiting night
• Order flyers and invitations for recruiting night
• Deliver flyers and invitations for recruiting night to school
• Make arrangements for in-school presentation to kids
• Order in-school stickers.
• Hang posters at school
  

This is just a start but it gives you the idea. Remember that you do not have to get all these items done today or even this week. Just make sure that you have captured the actionable steps that need to be taken and begin working them into your schedule.

Too many times we do not break the item down far enough for us to take action, the result is inaction and nothing gets done. Why is this? I think that this happens in part because we do not want our to do list to "get to big". We feel that if we write down everything that we have to do, the list will be overwhelming, not to mention that it will take us a lot longer to write all that down.

I encourage everyone to think about what is the actionable next step I can take as you are doing your planning. Take joy in knowing that you have the plan in place. Take joy in marking off each item as you complete it. Most importantly, take joy that you are reaching your Peak Achievement through strong planning.