Productivity Basics — Actions vs Tasks

Actions can often be synonymous with tasks but there is a distinct difference.

Tasks require actions but in themselves are more than just actions. A task ultimately has a predetermined goal in order to define it as a task. A task must be sufficiently defined to know when it is complete.

Completion of a task doesn’t have to mean that there is a successful outcome, only that the goal of the task was achieved. This could be time based, such as “read for 30 minutes” doesn’t necessarily speak to an obvious successful outcome or goal of a task other than you’ve spent 30 minutes reading.

Using the example here, the task may be to complete 30 minutes of reading a specific book. But the action is just the description of the activity or activities you want to do to achieve the tasks. This can involve some preparation work too such as get the book out ready for reading along with any note taking apps or equipment. Ensuring no distractions and any other environmental changes to aid in the reading.

The main action here will simply be reading. This could be a little more involved with taking notes and highlighting too and you will be performing action of thinking too. It depends on how tightly you define “reading” which can encompass this. The important takeaway here is the action helps achieve the task but isn’t the task in itself.

You can perform the action of reading.

If you stop or get distracted at 20 minutes then you haven’t achieved your task.

You could restart it later in this case breaking up the task or consider it failed but this is the difference between task and action. Actions are a building block of tasks but are their own entity that don’t even have to be tied to tasks either (especially inthe case of unproductive actions).

This post was created with Typeshare