Get your priorities correct and create more time.
13 November, 2020.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those posts about how to be ‘more organised’ or ‘five ways to accomplish everything on time’. Those kind of approaches have never generated meaningful change or progress for me, so I am not about to endorse them to you. Actually, what I have experienced time-and-again, is that valuing too much organisation and structured accomplishment can ultimately be a huge waste of time.
In this article I will show you, as quickly and effectively as I can, why setting clear Priorities is key to meaningful achievement and forwards progress. I will explain how to set clear priorities that create more time in your day. You will also learn about the huge stumbling block that is ‘perceived urgency.’ Importantly, the key for you to unlock the most from this article is to realise that it is all personal, it is all about you and what sparks you.
The endless game of Tetris
Do you love Tetris? Tetris, or Brick-Game as I came to know it as a kid in NZ, is a famous video game where you rotate different shaped ‘bricks’ to fit into an ever-growing wall. As the wall grows towards the top of the screen the pressure builds to complete whole rows, in order to make them disappear, and shrink the wall. It is the challenge of skillfully constructing these rows, and banishing multiple rows with a single ‘straight line four-brick’ (yeah, you know what I’m talking about) that creates an addictive little rush of satisfaction. It is that same feeling that many organised people get from ticking off an item on a list, or sending an email, or completing a chore.
I experience this kind of satisfaction too, and it feels great! It feels like I am mastering my time efficiently and getting lots of stuff done – gold star for Ben! I can answer email every day, give friends and family my attention, keep my lawn mowed and my dishes washed. I can become better at these things with practice and do them more efficiently, allowing me to clear my inbox daily, devote more time with friends, and to start dusting the house on Tuesdays. By filling my day with productive tasks done efficiently I know it will feel like I am using my time really well and making lots of progress, and it will appear that way too. All I need to do is rinse and repeat… right?
What are you riding these days – hamster wheel or bicycle?
Sure, being busy and efficient is fine BUT in order to actually achieve anything you need to be moving forward, making real progress towards what you truly want or need. So the question I put to you is this: are you riding a hamster wheel or a bicycle? The difference, as I’m sure you’ve realised, is simple: a bicycle moves you forward when you push on the pedals whereas a hamster wheel simply speeds up. Another way to look at it is that the hamster wheel is the illusion of progress created by being highly productive or efficient with things that have no effect towards the progress you want. Is what you are doing each day getting you closer to where you want to be? Think about it.
It may help to visualise it, like in the video below. Both of the shapes are repeating circles but only one is moving anywhere.
It is very easy to get caught on the hamster wheel if you naturally think, as most do, that being highly productive or efficient will help to generate the results you want. Of course that is true, but only if your efforts are connected to the result; otherwise you are simply responding to a sense of urgency that is probably hijacking your time, but more on that in a sec. Do you know what is really useful for connecting your efforts to a result?
Creating clear priorities and linking them to actions
What are your top three priorities? Or put another way, what are three things that you need or want to make happen more than anything else at this point in your life? If you don’t have a top three, what about a top two, or a top one? Stop reading for a minute and write down what they could be, you don’t have to get it perfect, just have a go.
It can be hard to think about priorities without an example, so I’ll share my own priorities and show you how I am linking them to action. Please note that my list of actions isn’t perfect. They aren’t what a person of greater knowledge or experience would necessarily do because I’m not there yet. Nonetheless these actions are generating results towards my priorities. One last thing, because of bipolar disorder my ‘evergreen’ top priority is mental wellbeing. But that has been my practice for so long that it is like breathing to me now – I hardly have to think about it, so won’t include it here.
These are my top three priorities right now:
- Secure more mental wellbeing R&D funding to make amazing resources for myself and my clients.
- Double my monthly WellStream readership to help more people access my free resources.
- Maintain my currently adequate efforts towards getting fitter and stronger so I reach my fitness goals by the end of summer.
These are the ‘sub-optimal but good-enough’ actions I am taking:
- Towards funding:
- Make a list of all national research and development funders for which my project appears to be a medium-to-good fit.
- Contact them, by phone preferably, and talk through funding criteria and the fit of my project with what they are looking to fund.
- If it is a good fit, apply with my best-effort application.
- Follow up regularly to make sure they need no other information.
- Keep an eye out for new potential funding options arising.
- Double my monthly WellStream readership.
- Publish a new article or substantial blog post at least once per week.
- Work towards improving the search engine optimisation (SEO) of these posts.
- Link the articles into WellStream social accounts (Insta and FB @thewellstream).
- Email my subscribers with a weekly review including a summary of latest writings.
- Ask people to share articles if they think they are valuable – please share this one.
- Towards getting fitter and stronger:
- Strength training 3 times per week, either gym or calisthenics, preferably with a buddy.
- Martial arts training twice per week, either Dojo or Kata practice.
- At least one long bike ride of 15km or more.
- Salad and protein shake for lunch 3x per week.
That is what I want and how I am going about getting it. Everything else in my life right now is structured around supporting these three priorities. A few key points here:
- All three priorities are meaningful to me. I am emotionally connected to them which gives me the energy to work towards them. It is almost impossible to work towards something difficult that you really don’t care about, so pick something close to your heart.
- Every action I have chosen is within my current abilities, even if some are outside my comfort zone.
- Every action contributes something directly and obviously to the priority it supports.
- In setting my actions I am trying to maximise the effect and the collateral benefits (such as learning new things) of those actions. In other words I am prioritising effectiveness over efficiency – I am willing to spend a longer time doing something if it is very effective.
- The set of actions for each priority are harmonious, they build upon each other.
- Until these priorities are met I don’t change them, barring catastrophe, I am committed. I might change the actions if I learn a more effective way to achieve the priority.
- I have structured all of these priorities similarly to goals in that they all have an end point, something specific that I am trying to achieve. This is different to my constant priority of maintaining mental wellbeing which is more of a daily practice.
I find that this way of creating priorities and actions makes it easy for me to decide what I need to do and get started quickly. Remember that, with very few exceptions, it is better to get started with your best effort than to try and create a perfect plan first. This is because the actions you need to take only become obvious when you are actually working through them.
The pitfalls of ‘perceived urgency’
Your brain is hard-wired to respond to urgency by taking action, and as a result people can exploit this to make you take the wrong actions. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘sense of urgency’? It is commonly used in sales and marketing as a technique to increase the likelihood of selling something. Phrases like ‘One Time Only!’, ‘Limited Time Offer!’, or ‘Only One Room Left At This Price!’ are (aside from being total BS) all designed to trigger a reaction from you by creating a feeling that time is running out. In other words they put you under pressure and prick your fight-or-flight response in the hopes of eliciting a profitable action.
Of course this doesn’t just happen in the world of marketing: it is everywhere. We live in a world increasingly characterised by people asking us to pay attention to what is urgent instead of what is important. This is why understanding and knowing how to apply the principle of priority is a great defence against urgency. Best-selling author, and honorary Spartan, Steven Pressfield puts it best:
“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.” – Steven Pressfield
Some illuminating examples:
- Out of nowhere your boyfriend tries to pick a fight with you. The fight-or-flight urgency thing to do is get pissed off and start fighting back, but the important thing is to understand what is behind his behaviour, causing him to act out.
- You are the first to arrive at a car crashed into a tree and there are two people thrown from the car. The first is screaming about how much pain they are in and waving their arms at you to come and help them and the second person is sitting quietly. The urgent thing to do is to help the person screaming at you, but the important thing to do is to check for danger then go to the quiet person first while calling for an ambulance. This is because the screaming person can clearly breathe and has enough energy to yell and wave. The quiet person could be in critical condition but unable to signal it.
- You are in the middle of working on your project when a team-member tells you about a must-read article that they think will improve what you are doing right now. The urgent thing would be to stop work to read whatever they recommended, but the important thing is to remember that if you are in the flow just keep going. You can always take a look later.
It is in this way that people and events can divert your attention from what is important to what is urgent, at the detriment of your own goals and priorities. When you decide on a set of priorities and actions you immediately know what is important and what is just distraction. Do what is important first. Having priorities will make it easy to identify busy work that should be either deferred to a later date, delegated to someone else, or deleted entirely (this one is my favourite). The net result of this is more time in your day for what truly matters to you.
Back in 2016 I was working full-time and spent 6 nights a week either mentoring, training, or teaching classes. On the seventh night I was going to counseling. Needless to say, I got burned out pretty fast. I also didn’t have any priorities, I thought that EVERYTHING I was doing was super important… but it really wasn’t. I didn’t need to be working full time. I didn’t need to be teaching classes or mentoring. The only really important thing on my schedule was the counseling (a dead giveaway because it exhausted me for days after each session). The rest of it hardly even mattered.
At the same time a friend I was living with cut his work back and avoided taking on obligations so that he could spend more time doing what he loved, painting; and he was much happier for it. As a result he had ample time and wellbeing and was growing while I was stressed and exhausted. He just set better priorities.
Conclusion: using priorities to create more time
By setting clear priorities you can create meaningful actions. By doing these actions you can effectively make progress towards what you really need or want. This also creates clarity from which you can identify needless busy-work that can be culled from your day, creating more time for you.
The reality is that most of what we do is not important. As John Maxwell famously put it, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” When we live in a world saturated in perceived urgency it creates the illusion that everything is important, every decision is crucial, and this leads to feelings of anxiety, stress, and inadequacy.
Defining what is important to you personally, and then prioritising it, will enable you to reduce the emotional and financial burden of perceived urgency and lead a more meaningful life.
Ben at WellStream
The author is neither a doctor or psychologist or claims to be.
The ideas expressed in this article are not medical opinions. This article is intended to be useful and informative, not to subvert or replace medical treatments, therapies, or diagnosis. If you are experiencing undue distress please seek medical assistance.