Tips + Tools For Prioritizing Your Life
As a professional coach as well as someone a bit obsessed with how to be purposeful with our time, here are 5 of my favorite tools for prioritizing!
Below, as promised, is the Priorities Tips + Tools Sheet - a bonus for our Reading And Purpose Nonfiction Book Club members! Membership is a benefit to all paid subscribers - you are welcome to upgrade your subscription at any time and join us!
I remember a season, several years ago, when I had a hundred things going in a hundred different directions - and often felt like my mind was, too. A young family, a growing business, a fairly new community I was still navigating, personal goals, professional goals, friendships, home care… the list goes on. Perhaps you can relate.
I also remember the moment during that same season when one of my family members started having difficulty breathing, us rushing to the emergency room, and spending a couple of days in the hospital.
My priorities became crystal clear in an instant.
Our theme here at Reading And Purpose throughout January, particularly in book club, has focused on priorities - which can be one of those words we find difficult to clearly define. We might consider our priorities more at a ‘I know them when I experience them’ level, or sometimes more accurately, ‘I know them when I realize they’ve changed.’ Or even, like in my example above, when an unexpected event places them front and center for us.
* And to update that example, my family member was diagnosed with a respiratory issue and, after some time in the hospital and a couple weeks of breathing treatments, fully recovered.
Proactive Prioritizing
In his bestselling book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown shares that when the word priority entered the English lexicon in the 1400s, it was singular - it meant one thing, the very top or first or #1 thing. The word stayed singular for 500 years until, in the 1900s, we decided to pluralize it and began referring to priorities.
“Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality,” writes McKeown. “Somehow we would now be able to have multiple ‘first’ things… But when we try to do it all and have it all, we find ourselves making trade-offs at the margins that we would never take on as our intentional strategy.”
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, frazzled, on the verge of burnout, or like there’s never enough hours in the day, you probably understand this at a core level.
I don’t know that we’ll ever go back to only using ‘priority’ in the singular, but I do know there are practical, purposeful ways we can delineate - and honor - our top priorities regularly. We can learn how to proactively decide what matters most - in our lives, in a given week, on our daily to-do list. And we don’t have to wait for a trip to the emergency room or some other life-shaking event to occur in order to determine what matters most.
As a professional certified coach and someone with a lifelong obsession of being as intentional and purposeful with time as possible, I feel like I’ve tried just about every tool and technique around. Here are five of my favorites - the ones I return to again and again for deciding and honoring my top priorities.
I encourage you to pick one that speaks to you (or a new one that comes to mind as you read through the tips sheet), give it a go, then reassess in a week or two. Even if you need to tweak or change or try something new at that time, you may be surprised how much more clear your priorities have become, simply due to the extra attention.
You’ll also find additional resources and notes about our February book club events at the end.
Enjoy!