Priorities

Priorities

“If it’s a priority you’ll find a way. If it isn’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

– Jim Rohn

Where do I start? How can I set priorities when I have many urgent things in my life. It's impossible to accomplish everything I want to do because I do not have the time, and I cannot organize myself.

These are common statements that we all come across from time to time. Yet, in a world filled with so many stimuli, demands, urgencies, and sometimes crises, it's no wonder many people cannot follow through on their dreams and goals.

One of the many challenges is how we go from choosing to do busy work to the work that is important to our goals. As life throws so much at us, it is difficult to discern what is important versus what is urgent at times. So it is not until we step back from what is happening to us and analyze its true meaning and purpose.

Think of the endless emails you may get asking or requesting you to take action. These emails represent other people's and organizations' agendas, which may or may not align with yours. This is where you need to step back and decide what is truly a part of my overall goal and what is just noise. The analogy of emails also works in our relationships with others, whether personal or professional.

It's essential first to define what is urgent and what is important. Things that could qualify as urgent include crisis, pressing problems, deadlines, and being reactive. Living life in urgency creates stress, burnout, crisis management, and consistent skill of learning how to put out fires. What qualifies as important would be preparation and planning, prevention, recreation and personal time, relationship building, and being proactive. The result would include vision and perspective, living a life of balance, being disciplined, having few crises, and being in control.

Urgent things in life will always act on us. They will never completely go away because something will always happen. For example, your child will get sick, an employee will call out from work, You may have an accident, and many other variables that life throws at all of us. These actions act on us, and many of them require an immediate response from us. But to focus on what is important in our life will require us to act on that.

An example could be wanting to get healthier or lose some weight. This is important because you want longevity and quality of life; you want to be around your family. But you have to act on this, which would require you to incorporate physical activity into your daily schedule, go to the gym, buy the right foods, plan the right menu, and take an afternoon walk for cardio. These activities are things that you must take action on; otherwise, nothing will happen.

The more time we spend on urgent things, the more urgent things come into our life. Energy flows where our focus goes; if we constantly put out fires, our attention will inevitably keep looking for fires. But how do we set priorities to step back from that urgency so we can work on important things in our lives? Three simple steps can guide every one of us to follow through with our priorities in life.

First, connect with your vision. What are the things that you care about and give you meaning? How do you see your future self, what does the person look like, and what other things that you want to accomplish. This is where we sit down to reflect on our own personal values and decide what is important to us, and for each person, it is different. The first step in creating a priority is to define what is important to you and then have a vision of what that will look like. Before we can connect to the vision, we must have clarity on what that looks like, and again for each of us, it is different. Take the time to write out what is important to you based on your needs, wants, and desires. From this, you will find and build clarity and a vision that works for you.

Next, we have to identify our roles. Having your vision can encompass many different things, including professional, personal, family, fun, and recreational. To connect with your vision, you have to identify your role in each one of these visions. For example, if I am trying to build a relationship with my son, I will focus on my role as a father. If I am working for an organization, I will focus on my role as a support to that organization, being an employee. If I want to strengthen my relationship with my spouse, I will focus on my role as either a husband or wife. Finally, if I'm looking to make sure I have time to do things that I enjoy, such as biking or hiking, I will focus on my role to myself.

After defining my roles, I will need to set goals for each one of these roles. The best way to do this is to plan weekly your goals for each vision and role in your life. For instance, if my role is to lose 10 pounds and I'm planning my calendar this week, I will incorporate physical activity, what I will eat, possibly calorie counting, weighing myself daily, and so on. Then, once I have my plan in place, I need to execute that plan. One of the many challenges we all face is that writing out a plan sounds great in theory but implementing it is another thing. To prioritize our goals and execute our dreams, we must first believe that we can do it and make sure there is a strong why in what we are trying to accomplish.

The process of having a strong why into things we are trying to do is the primary motivation for prioritizing. An example could be that I'm losing 10 pounds because I want to have longevity as I want to see my children grow up and I want to be there for my wife so that we can live a long, healthy, quality life. So that's strong why it gives me the greater drive to be successful with my goal; thus, my priorities are based on that outcome.

The truth is many of us want to set goals for many different things we try to do in life, but much of it is not essential to us. It's just busy work or novelty. So before we can reflect on setting priorities and putting together a vision, we need to spend time with ourselves and reflect on what is important to us as an individual. This requires introspection and reflection. Take the time to understand your values to set forth a vision that will give you the strong why and allow you to succeed in any of the goals you set.

Looking at the statement that energy flows where focus goes, if we align our values with our dreams and ambitions, all of our energy will go in that direction. Through this action, we will not have time for the daily noise that life throws at us. This will require us to also say no to some of that noise even though it may be entertaining, such as social media watching a movie you may have seen three or four times because you liked it and you know what you're going to get from it or doing easy tasks. Be bold and be brave; do the hard things first. For example, if you started your day and had a task of six things to be done, one of those tasks was eating a frog. To be successful, you would do the hard thing first-eat, the frog. Then every task after that becomes easy, and you have a sense of accomplishment.

Excerpts from: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.   

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