Douglas: Welcome to the Unleash Your Potential Blog, what question can I answer for you today?
VisionVanguard: How do I stay focused on my priorities?
Douglas: Priorities are really important. They are a key piece of long-term happiness. A factor in preventing burnout lies in making sure that we are spending time on what is important to us (a.k.a. our priorities). With that in mind, to answer this question I would ask you to consider some questions.
My first question to you might be, what is keeping you from what you think are your priorities? It might be that your priorities have somehow shifted and you weren’t consciously aware. I would argue that we are deciding to do things every day and what we decide to do, speaks in some ways to our priorities. It usually follows that we make time for things that matter to us. The key lies in understanding what truly matters to you.
Sometimes, when a person is trying to change their relationship with food, they keep a food diary. Essentially, for a week they write down everything they consume, no matter how inconsequential. The purpose is to help them realize exactly what and how much they are eating. Before you can change your behavior, you have to understand it. This concept can work well here too.
Keep an activity journal for a week. Write down everything you do with time spent. It does not matter how long you spent on it or what it was, just keep track. Try to avoid making judgments at this step. If you spent 1 hour and 45 minutes playing a game on your phone (which I might have done yesterday) then write it down. Treat this as data collection. One of the first rules of research when collecting data is not to start analyzing data while you collect it. There will be time for analysis later on. At the end of each day, your total should add up to 24 hours. You even need to account for sleep. After a week you should have a log of 168 hours.
If you are like me, excel is a great way to keep track of this. I might keep track on my phone (since it is almost always nearby) and then type into Excel after the week if done. The reason to put it into Excel is that you can then easily create a pie chart to visualize where you spend your time. Again, no judgment just yet.
Once you have collected data on where you spend your time (a.k.a. your priorities) you need to figure out what you think your priorities are. Spend some time quietly sitting with yourself (how long will be different for each of us, but the more time you spend is usually better). Ask the question, “What is truly important to me?” As with the journal, do not evaluate this list just yet. And keep in mind to dig into the reason behind the priority. For example, you might be thinking, “I have to go to work I guess.” That is not wholly accurate. Your priority is living a certain lifestyle, which costs money, and as my mother was fond of telling me, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” so having a job is a priority. The difference is that you need to accept responsibility for each priority. The same goes for something like sleep. You don’t have to sleep unless of course health and sanity are important to you. There is certainly plenty of research out there that supports the idea that we need sleep to survive. Each person needs varying amounts, but we all need it. The point is, that you need to own what is important to you.
Don’t look at the time journal while you are making the priority list. We have an amazing ability to justify things and if you are looking at the time list, you will subconsciously start to rationalize and adjust your priorities to “fit” the time journal. The key here is to be honest and own what is important to you. Feel free to make the list, wait 24 hours, and then revise the list. You want to make sure that the list of priorities is an accurate representation of what is important to you right now.
Now that you have the time journal with the accompanying pie chart and priorities list in hand, it's time for some data analysis. Are the biggest chunks of time in your pie chart represented on your priority list? If not, you have two choices. 1.) change what you spend your time on, or 2.) acknowledge that your priorities are not what you thought they were. Maybe, just maybe, even though recreation is important, spending 105 minutes on a mindless game is not where I want to choose to spend my time. As you are analyzing this data, be cautious about slipping into judgment mode. Spending time on something you didn’t have as a priority doesn’t make you a bad person, or lazy, or however you might characterize it. It just means you made a choice which you can now change since you know where you spent your time.
Finally, this process should be repeated whenever you start to feel as though you are not focused on your priorities. If my life is any marker, then this process needs to be repeated periodically. Over time, we let things creep in and divert us from our priorities. Or, our priorities shift and we need to change what we are doing. In either case, revaluating can be an important step in making sure we stay in line with our priorities.
I hope my answer sheds some light on your question. If you want to dig into this concept further, I encourage you to reach out and set up a conversation. In the meantime, check back tomorrow for the next question in the Unleash Your Potential Series!
Be Well!
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