Daily Dose 8: Priority Primer

• How long would it take to compile a list of everything you must do and want to do for your whole life?
• How would you know if you forgot to list an important item?
• Do you think it would be time well spent if you prepared such a list?
• How do you think you would feel once you had the list in hand: energized or overwhelmed?
• How long would the list be helpful: a day, a week, a month, or a year, before it would be hopelessly out-of-date?

Quite a few organizational systems start with compiling such a list–and yes, if someone has hired a time consultant it might take several days of consulting fees to pull it together. These systems are following excellent ancient advice from the Lord when they ask their clients to undertake such a project. The Lord’s advice comes to us in the form of a prayer from Moses back to the Lord in Psalm 90: teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom (Psalms 90:12).

Who can best Help us Use Time Well

There it is in a nutshell: even people living thousands of years ago recognized a need for help using the time they had to the fullest. What was a little less jumbled in those long ago years was where the best help would come from (the Lord as the Designer and Order-er of time) and what the bottom line was for handling time well (to learn wisdom). Too often, our motivation to “get organized” is to be less stressed from the pressures of obligations.

The Ultimate To-Do List

Of course, starting a to-do list is not rocket science for most of us. We all have “easy items” we can quickly jot down, usually practical, tangible things we need to do (go grocery shopping, make a sales call, buy a birthday card, read the Bible) and we all have some looming pressure items gnawing on our concentration (study for tomorrow’s test, get the guest room ready for in-laws, prepare for the quarterly review meeting).

But other parts stymie us. What do we write for what we should do or want to do with our lives? It’s not at all unusual to become bogged down preparing a “life list” because some items come more from our values and priorities than the needs of our daily schedules, and values and priorities are two concepts most of us have a hard time understanding in a practical way.

How will thinking about priorities help in a busy day, neck-deep in events that are not going as planned—or were not planned but are still going and we find ourselves running to catch them?

First, knowing your priorities makes it easier to attend to the quiet, but important, elements of life.

Secondly, fond desires and pet projects are less likely to be neglected for years on end. Even if they sit dormant for six or eight months, their time to be top consideration will come up for some intentional time.

Thirdly, seeing life’s events fitting into various priority categories, does make life seem more purposeful and foresighted. Plus it becomes easier to see when and how specific tasks might fulfill two or three priorities, instead of just one. Again, for most of us this is an encouraging and empowering feeling.

Finally, priorities help keep that executive mind-set about tasks, which in turn makes it easier for us to move from task to task in a purposeful way. A contented sense about setting aside work on a project because you have done what you planned to do on it for that day is a good thing. Our spirits tend to bloom when things like that happen. On the other hand, seeds of frustration and despair take root when you feel like you “ran out of time”–if you’d only had another three hours you could have been DONE, instead, you now need to find more time to finish and everything is going to be SO BUSY for the whole rest of the week.

Identifying Priorities

So what are priorities anyway? If they are so important, why are they so difficult to pinpoint? Presenting thoughts about values and priorities in bite-sized pieces is going to take several posts, but that does not need to keep you from beginning to compile your own list. Here is a simple low tech way to get started:

1) Take some paper and a writing tool, literal or digital, whichever works for you.

2) Divide the paper into at least seven sections: Personal spiritual responsibilities, other personal responsibilities, home and family responsibilities, work and/or school responsibilities, ministry and church responsibilities, societal responsibilities, dreams and desires.

For most of us, those categories cover almost all the bases our brains can think about. HOWEVER, this is your list. If another label, or another entire category suits you better, put it down.

3) Start listing items under the categories that make the most sense to you. Don’t try to put items in every category, just use the ones that suit your life items. Don’t worry about whether an item seems trivial. On the other hand, don’t try to make items sound grand or important before you write them down. Feeling guilty about something you think you should be doing, but never do? Put it down inside of some brackets. Feeling wishful about something you can’t imagine could ever happen, so why write it down? Go ahead, put it down.

Well, this part will take some time, so keep the list beside your bed or your favorite chair,tacked on the frig, in the book bag, or listed in your phone: someplace it won’t get lost for the next, oh say, five to seven days. Look at it every day, and add items as you think of them.