Components of Doing a Thing

How to go from thinking to doing

I thoroughly enjoy overthinking the productivity space, especially for us ADHDers. It’s my shiny object. It’s my hyperfocus. It’s my favorite topic because it is so fascinating.

This is the stuff I think about while I’m brushing my teeth, or while I’m out for a walk. I’ll ask myself things like “Holy shit, Russ, what made you get out the door this time and actually go on a walk?”

And today’s inner ramble I would like to ramble outwardly unto you!

I found myself breaking down the components of doing a thing. Here’s what I got for ya:

Thinking

Thinking seems to be the first part of this process. We idly contemplate what “should” be done. Perhaps we are playing a video game and we think “I should stop playing this video game and go on a walk.” Or perhaps we are doing nothing…we just sit there and deliberate on what’s to be done.

Nothing happens during the thinking. Really cool for idea generation, though.

Planning

Planning takes that thinking a step forward. There is actual action happening. We grab a pen and a paper and we move our hand around and it creates these cool ink thingies that humans call words. Those words are filled with hope. Things like “I will go on a walk” or maybe we doodle up some version of a calendar or schedule and design what a day looks like for us.

Planning is inking the thinking!

But alas, there is no doing. Really cool for creating some hope, though!

Talking

There is another thing that happens when we ink the think and get all excited about it. This is when we start talking! Talking is awesome. Or, it was. Remember when we used to get all excited about cool new ideas, fun new projects, exciting new frontiers of exploration that we would share with our loved ones? Early on that was great. Verbalizing our dreams and plans!

And then we failed at a bunch of them in a row, or we stopped doing a bunch of them, and we had enough external data points that we stopped believing in ourselves. Perhaps our loved ones stopped believing in us. Phrases like “This is just the next big thing with you” start emerging.

But talking was so awesome, it got us so juiced up! Rallying people around an idea was so much fun.

Talking is still not doing. Really cool for getting support and giving us external accountability, though.

Doing

Sometimes, all the stars align and the mercury is in retrograde or whatever the spiritual, astronomological sign is for forward motion. Sometimes we do the doing. It’s chaotic, it’s uncertain, it’s unreliable, but there have been times when we did the doing! What happened during those times?

I’ll share what it is for me, and then maybe you share what it is for you.

For me, the doing occurs when I have properly externalized the thinking into actionable and specific tasks, when I have talked about it in my community, to my family, my girlfriend, my sons, my masterminds, and I build up the appropriate level of external accountability for the difficulty of the task. (side note, difficulty does not mean physical difficulty, it means difficulty to get started on…could be as simple as doing the dishes.)

The final component of the doing is when the time comes that I dedicated from my thinking inking and I set my timer. I’m not going to go into my full on religious speech about how I worship the timer gods, but for a difficult task, the timer is “the way.”

Some final thoughts

It really frustrates me when I see how debilitated we are by getting lost in the thinking, being inefficient with our planning, stifling our talking, and ultimately NOT doing the doing.

We can absolutely help nudge each other forward on the most difficult of tasks. So if any of you are ruling yourselves out “nothing ever works for me” or “I fail at everything” then I just want you to know that you aren’t alone in that thinking, and at the same time, you’re wrong. And the absolute best way forward, in my opinion, is to exercise the talking part over and over and over with a community of your shame-free, judgment-free peers and rebuild that confidence in yourself! Share those dreams!

OK, now for the big question: How do you do the doing when you are successful at the doing?