The Five C’s of Completing Team Projects and Tasks
Please check out Charlie Gilkey's Blog Site Flourish. I have been following him a long time and he is very good at Practical steps of Project and Task Management. There are five C's to completing anything:
Clarity Concreteness Commitment Concentration Celebration
If you don't have a clear idea of what you need or want to do, it's hard to do anything. You might have a gut feeling that you kinda-sorta need to do something, but that doesn't get you very far.
A lot of people get stuck in inaction from the get-go precisely because they don't have clarity about what they need to be doing. And without that clarity, it's hard to move on to the other completion steps.
What it's like to have clarity: You have a general sense of what needs to be done. There's not a lot of wheel-spinning at the general level, though there may be some uncertainty at the specific level.
What happens if you don't have clarity: It's hard to start anything, and the things that are started usually don't get finished. At the end of the day, a list of things that you should've done becomes apparent, and self-punishment begins.
Concreteness
Clarity is knowing generally what needs to be done, whereas concreteness is knowing specifically what needs to be done. Getting down to the specific level is what enables you to take the vision in your head and turn it into something in the world.
What it's like to have concreteness: You know specifically what needs to be done to complete the task or project you've planned to do. You can move onto commitment and dig in to complete what you've set out to do.
What happens if you don't have concreteness: You have a general idea of what to do but don't know where to start. Big projects are prone to lack concreteness, as are tasks that are new and unfamiliar to us.
Commitment
What it's like to have commitment: You're not looking at a world of possible things that need to get done - you're looking at a few specific actions that you can finish. Since you have clarity and concreteness, you know that getting them done matters, so you can be all in.
What happens if you don't have commitment: Though you know what needs to be done, you don't have the motivation or the will to do it. You'll be more prone to get caught in the Loop or to get swept away by some other shiny bauble, and your work will be left undone.
Concentration
We normally understand concentration as mental concentration, but in this context, let's broaden our understanding to all of your different physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual resources. The more you can concentrate all of your resources on a given action, the easier that action is to do. Concentration is largely the idea behind the engagement threshold. Figuring out your engagement threshold for your work is simply allowing you to use the right amount of energy for the right job, rather than having a mismatch between what it takes to complete your work and the time, energy, and attention you're giving to your work.
What it's like to have concentration: When you commit, you complete. It's that simple because once you've made up your mind to do something, you harness your resources to get one thing, and only one thing, done.
What happens if you don't have concentration: You've committed to doing something, but when you try to do it, it just doesn't happen, or when it does happen, it takes a lot of effort to do it. You're also prone to project shuffling since you're not staying on task. We do that because it's easier, in the short term, to start working on something else than it is to stick with (and complete) what you're working on.
Celebration Every single thing you do that makes your future better (or that maintains your current position) is a win. Of all the things that could have happened, you showed up and made a difference to yourself and other people, even if the differences seem small. A bunch of small steps taken add up to a great journey traveled.
What it's like when you celebrate: No matter the outcome of your work, you get a chance to pat yourself on the back for showing up and working through the stages of completion. You feel appreciation in your bones for manifesting new possibilities, and you can smile at a job well done. The positive orientation to completing this particular thing spills over to the next thing you do, making it easier to complete the next thing, too.
What happens if you don't celebrate: Even when you finish something, it doesn't feel like you're any better off. Your language around your work is largely about "buckling down," "plowing through," and force — your work is something you have to to do rather than get to do.