It starts with a choice...
Suppose you are a lawyer at a high-powered practice and you are working to make partner or getting your midyear bonus and you get hit with the news that your ailing parent needs medical care and might be terminal, a friend wants you to attend a wedding, you have clients wanting a face-to-face meeting in a different state, and your daughter’s graduation is right in the middle of all of it. You are a little freaked out as to how you will get it all done. All of this just seems to be happening to you. Such pressure will probably cause you to become defocused so that nothing seems to be getting done. Loose ends everywhere! What do you do?
Prioritizing the chaos in your life requires that you make choices. This sounds simple, but it is easy to get so overwhelmed that we forget what is important to us–– we get caught up in the activity of doing, and forget why we are doing it. Some people would look at the list above and say to themselves that the ability to do these things is a factor in how to prioritize them. For example, a coming death of a parent brings finality to all future possible interactions and might move this issue to the top of the list. A daughter’s graduation might happen again, but the graduation is also a moment of pride for your daughter and for you as a parent–– as a family. A mid-year bonus, although nice, will happen again, and making partner isn’t guaranteed. So would you forego the finality of being with a dying parent to pursue a goal that isn’t guaranteed? A friend’s wedding might be nice, but would it compete with your push for a mid-year bonus, or with the pride you feel for your daughter? Would a client provide a bit of flexibility, if you asked? Asking such questions of yourself helps to bring clarity which leads to taking responsibility which gives you the ability to prioritize.
This scenario started as a jumble of stressors, but remembering what is important helps tease out the priority of all of the stressors. Being defocused wastes time. We don’t have to accept the noise as a given. We can take responsibility for our actions, which can affect decisions, which can bring order, or at the very least, maybe less chaos into our lives.
How we prioritize depends upon our values. When we find ourselves struggling to make a decision between two things… it’s usually because we know what we should do rather than just doing something we just want to do... but we need to be reminded of important things.
Time and Clarity of Thought are Your Most Valuable Resources
