If your results and productivity are often not as high as you hoped, there’s one key question to ask yourself.

When you create a to-do list for yourself, is it an actual, or an aspirational to-do list?

In other words, how realistically do you plan, for you?

If you constantly find your to-do list discouraging, with work left incomplete or lingering for days on the list, take a good look at how you’re planning.

Some people are pretty clear about what they can, and will get done in any given day, week or month.

Others are driven by wishful thinking. They hope to make big things happen, and big dreams come true. Many don’t get much past creating an elaborate dream of success, and hoping that it will come true.

If you want to make a vision or dream real, you have to convert it into actions and behaviors that drive results.

That means a dream and good intentions have to become actions such as:
- Planning
- Designing
- Learning
- Contacting
- Acquiring
- Communicating
- Coordinating
- Creating
- Testing
- Completing
- Capturing lessons learned

So how do you do with writing a good to-do list?

Is your planning usually accurate, based on knowledge of what you can and will do in a given time period?

Or do you end up carrying items on your to-do list for days, weeks, months or years? And if that’s true, what might be going on?

1. You’re not ready.

Maybe the truth is that you need to go back one step, and do that task before you do this one. For example, do you need to do research and write a first draft before you write a final paper or blog post?

2. It’s not really your goal.

Maybe the goal you carry, and the tasks you add to your to-do list are based on someone else’s plan for you. Check to see if that might be true. If so, figure out what your own goal really is, and what tasks will lead you to it.

3. You’re not building in adequate transition and preparation time between tasks.

Maybe the reason you’re not getting the job done is that you’re not allowing enough transition time between tasks, and so your time estimates are way off for each task. Build that transition time to refresh and reset into your to-do list or planning.

4. The goal isn’t big enough, and compelling enough yet.

Perhaps the goal you’ve set just isn’t big enough, or inspiring enough to spur you into action. The status quo is more attractive, and so you work on maintaining that.

5. You haven’t broken the goal down into small enough tasks.

Maybe the tasks you set out for yourself are too big, and you’re choking on them. Keep breaking them down into one-day, one-hour, or even 20-minute tasks until they’re right-sized, and you almost can’t help but take action on them.

6. You’ve never improved your planning process.

Do a quick, periodic audit of your planning process. Here’s one way:

- When you write your to-do list, estimate how long you think each task will take.

- When the task is done, see if your time estimates were accurate.

- Make note of anything that affected your ability to complete the work in the time you estimated it would take, or any tasks you left off.

- Pay attention, too, to the tasks you didn’t really need to do in order to meet your goal.

- Look at the trends.

- Use the information to simplify your planning process so that it leads you to make better decisions about how you’ll use your resources, taking actions that lead more directly to the results you seek.

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Moving your organization into, and through, an uncertain future takes courage, confidence, and a lot of comfort with ambiguity.

If you’re a leader in uncertain times, you may have these concerns:

“How do I know if we’re on the right path for us to succeed…or perhaps, even to survive?”

“How can I let the people I’m leading know which direction to move next…and how can I do that as rapidly and clearly as possible?”

Leading well in even in the best of times works best if you create enough structure to reduce uncertainty, and yet not so much that you lock your team into an inflexible position.

They need a common goal, clear communication, and a plan…and room to adapt when the world they’re operating in changes unexpectedly.

Set your team up to be able to turn the best intentions and limited resources into maximum results on behalf of your customers and your company…before your competition can.

Leadership in unpredictable circumstances requires the ability to read your environment well, especially the significant changes in it. And then you must have the ability to communicate that well, and to inspire appropriate action, as a result.

When you do, you give your company or team far more opportunity to respond well to changing circumstances, reducing the changes they’ll be blindsided by them.

Here are a few tips for creating the right team signals, and then using them well in the uncertain circumstances:

1. Figure out the relevant details you have to pay close attention to.

Not all information is valuable. Lots of it is just noise.

But some details are absolutely crucial to your success.

Unpredictability and uncertainty doesn’t have to hold you back.

Knowing what signs and signals you must pay close attention to can make or break you. It tells you where to direct your attention, action and resources, leading most likely to success.

It’s almost inevitable that there is something valuable you can monitor, measure, and track that will help you stay focused and moving ahead well, together.

2. Figure out the minimum daily, weekly, and monthly communication requirements for your team to function well in current and foreseeable circumstances.

At a minimum, who needs information, to do what, if you have can provide it to them?

When do they need the information?

How do they need to receive the information – what channels, and in what format – in order to be able to understand it, and act on it well, and in a timely fashion in these circumstances?

3. Use the same terminology…and make sure you are.

It’s easy to believe you’re communicating well with someone, only to find out that you’re talking about very different things even though you’re using the same terms.

Here’s one non-work example to illustrate the point:

What comes to mind when you think of the word, “vacation”? (Just for fun, and to make this a graphic example, describe it in enough detail that you wish you could take that vacation right now).

Now ask three other people the same thing, what they think of when they hear the word “vacation.”

The odds are, you’ll come up with four VERY different ideas of what a vacation is.

In normal, everyday discussions you have to get on the same page to make any conversational headway, especially if there is any kind of agreement you need to reach, as is the case on almost any team.

Clear communication, starting with common terminology, is all that much more important when information comes at a premium (if the information is available at all), attention is limited, fear is running high, and the risk of error is very high, as well.

4. Listen. Don’t just stop talking…really LISTEN.

You may think you’re listening when you’re not talking. Often, though, our thoughts and fears are chattering away rapidly, keeping us bound up in our own concerns, even as we seem to be listening.

Still those attention-blocking concerns of the past, present, future – and places you’d really rather be at the moment.

Make space for new information to come in.

5. Create the time and space for dialogue now and then, when you can.

Uncertain times call for stronger than average teamwork.  You can’t dictate teamwork, legislate it, expect it, or inspect it in. I was in several different circumstances recently when leaders took this approach – trying to dictate teamwork, without engaging the people whose best efforts their own success depended upon.

Ultimately you have to inspire teamwork, for followers have to trust their leaders, if they are to follow fully, and with best effort.

Create ways for dialogue to occur in the simplest, most user-friendly way possible.

This, alone, can go a long way to opening up channels for essential information to flow out, and back in…leading you and your team more surely to success, even in uncertain times.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.