Setting Life's Priorities
“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s,” Greg McKeown wrote in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. “It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing.”
In fact, priority “stayed singular for the next 500 years,” he adds. “Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.”
John Rampton LinkedIn
Setting Your Life Priorities
Now and then, you may ponder the complexities and maybe even some chaos in your life. You might struggle to figure out what’s next. Maybe you feel confused at times about which way to go. Have you thought about setting your life priorities to make your life easier?
It's hard to make decisions when you’re struggling to determine what’s important to you. What will you do next? Where will you go for the evening? Who will you choose to pass the time with?
Feeling torn between two or more people, places and things is common if you haven’t yet identified your priorities. After all, when you consider everything and everyone in your life as all-equal in terms of their “level” of importance, it will be tough to choose what to do next.
"The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities." - Stephen Covey
Setting your life priorities is a way of identifying what’s most important to you. Once you determine your priorities, you’ll be pleased with the ease of making decisions and the serenity that comes with knowing you did the right thing.
Establishing priorities also gives you a clearer focus on how to allot your time. If you allow the bulk of your time to do what’s most important with the most important people in your life, you’ll feel more fulfilled and satisfied with your life experiences.
Common Life Priorities
What might your priorities be?
The possibilities are endless.
In the list below, you’ll find many common priorities in no particular order. Feel free to use the list as inspiration to help you figure out your priorities.
Family
Finances
Friends
Extended family
Work
Hobbies
Personal appearance
Health and physical exercise/activities
Nutritious eating
“Alone-time” with partner
Quality time with the children
Playing games on the internet
Talking on the phone
Watching television
Example of a “Prioritized” Listing of Life Priorities
The whole idea of setting priorities is to put the many elements of your life into order, with those that are most important to you at the top. Knowing your highest priority on the list is necessary to make focused, wise decisions that are right for you.
Consider this next list, which is prioritized, as an example of someone’s life priorities (in order).
Family
Alone-time with partner
Work
Health and physical exercise
Nutritious eating
Friends
Watching television
Personal appearance
Hobbies – movies and reading
Coming Up With Your Priorities
"Lack of time is actually lack of priorities." - Timothy Ferris
Setting your priorities in life may take time and effort. However, taking the time to reflect on your day-to-day life and determine what’s on the top of your list will make your life so much easier. Once your priorities are clear to you, decisions on how to spend your time and with who will be a cinch.
This exercise of figuring out your priorities might reveal some things that shock or surprise you.
For example, you might realize that you’re spending most of your time hanging out with friends even though you feel that your family is more important. Or you aren’t taking as much care with your kids as you thought you were.
Regardless of what you discover that you weren’t expecting, setting your priorities now will help you limit or even remove the less-important elements of your life and enable you to focus more fully on what means the most to you.
You can live more joyfully by setting your life priorities.
Knowing what’s important to you and devoting your time to those things at the top of your list will ensure you experience an enriched and fulfilled life.
“Life is all about priorities. Year after year, day after day, and even minute after minute you have to embrace what is more important and essential for you and not look back. When others don’t understand or admonish you for your choices don’t give it any energy because they are telling you that their wants are more significant than yours.”
Carl Henegan
I remember an old quote, I think my mother shared it with me…
“When all is said and done, there’s more said than done”
Words that have stayed with me for many years and I know I have been guilty of saying more than doing. I guess prevarication is a useful word here. But why do I prevaricate? Is it because of a lack of a goal or perhaps even a fear of my goal?
I like to think of prevarication as creative avoidance. If I can remind myself that it takes energy to engage in this kind of avoidance, then I can question if that energy could be directed towards my goals.
Engaging in creative avoidance suggests that there could be some fear about actually achieving our life goals. if your goals are not sitting comfortably in your list of priorities then it’s worth stopping and taking stock of where you are and where you want to be.
It is from your Life Priorities that you create your monthly, weekly and daily list of actions.
When creating your daily list of tasks or actions it’s well worth remembering Jim Collins’quote…
If You Have More Than Three Priorities, You Have No Priorities - Jim Collins
Until next week...
Alan /|\