Actionable Tasks vs. Passive Advice
As we get closer to launching a closed Alpha version of Ativiti, we’ve been trying to take how-to blog posts and figure out how they would translate into “Guides” in Ativiti. Luckily for us, dozens of how-to posts are written every day, with titles like 10 Steps to Getting a Job Through Twitter, Top 10 Ways to Save Money in a Recession, and How to Film Customer Case Study Videos.
Reading through dozens of posts has raised a big question in our minds: what makes something “actionable”? Can all the author’s suggestions be acted upon immediately? Are some intended for the passive reader - either contextual advice for specific situations, or habit-forming advice?
The conclusion we’ve come to is that there is a huge difference between actionable to-dos and passive advice. Something is actionable when it can be immediately turned into a concrete task with a clear way to identify when that task has been completed. In Penelope Trunk’s blog post on How to Beat the System to get a Great Job, a bunch of her recommendations are actionable:
- Identify and start working on a project that will boost my resume
- Find someone else’s project or business to work on for free
- Search for other resumes that reflect what kind of job I want and adapt mine accordingly
On the other hand, the rest of her items are passive advice - something you carry with you and attempt to turn into a habit over time.
- Execute a project until it’s good enough (contextual advice)
- Exhibit patience (habit-forming advice)
These are intangible - you can’t put them in a task list today and check them off tomorrow.
There is a risk associated with not acknowledging the difference between actionable and non-actionable tasks. If passive tasks are disguised as actionable ones, you will struggle to get through your to-do list and recognize a measurable impact on your productivity. Don’t get me wrong - intangible advice plays a major role in our personal and professional growth over time. I consume blog posts written by entrepreneurs and VCs with the express purpose of slowly adopting their perspective and habits as my own. But these posts often won’t help with the specific tasks I have to accomplish when I get to work tomorrow.
Ativiti is trying to do for how-to guides what Bloomberg did to financial news. Bloomberg structures and filters disparate sources of financial news and data into actionable insights for traders, portfolio managers, and research analysts. Similarly, Ativiti will structure project recommendations (which can appear in the medium of a blog post or magazine article) into projects that can be executed repeatedly and successfully.
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