“If everything is important, than nothing is.”  – Patrick Lencioni

Why is it that while I am often busy, I feel like I get nothing done?  I start the day off armed with my to-do list and the best of intentions, but by day’s end I find myself crawling into bed, exhausted and overwhelmed, with seemingly nothing to show for my efforts.  Just a longer to-do list with which to start the next day.

Life is filled with opportunities.  But along with those opportunities comes a deluge of decisions, responsibilities and obligations.  A deluge in which we can easily lose sight of what matters most and it suddenly becomes hard to distinguish between what’s important and what’s not. 

In an effort to keep our heads above water, we make the attempt to deal with anything and everything that comes our way, only to find ourselves drowning in a sea of the urgent and the unnecessary.  And being sucked under by the weight of it all.

Setting priorities can offer the means to stay afloat and stay the course.  Here are three important things to know about setting priorities.

1. You Have to Know What Matters Most

Setting priorities allows you to focus on what’s most important.  But in order to do so, you need to be able to differentiate between what’s important and what’s not.

What are you living for?  What matters most to you?  What brings you joy?  The answers to these questions can help you identify what’s most important and can serve as your compass with which to set your priorities and better navigate the demands of the day-to-day.

2.Understand that Urgent and Important are Subjective

What matters most to you may not matter as much to others.  At the same time, what matters most to others may not matter as much to you.  We each have our own unique path to follow and what matters most will vary from person to person.  Therefore, what is considered urgent and important will vary from person to person as well.

To be able to focus on what’s most important to you, when setting priorities you need to strike the proper balance between respecting and supporting others’ priorities and protecting your own.  Ways to do this include establishing personal boundaries and learning to say “no” when asked to do something that may sound like a good thing but might not be the right thing for you.

3. Admit That You Can’t Do It All

It’s more than likely you have more than one thing that’s important to you.  And each important item comes with its own set of opportunities, decisions, responsibilities and obligations.  When setting priorities, acknowledge the fact that you can’t do it all.  At least not all at once.

For everything there is a season.  With that in mind, consider the day, the week, the season, and prioritize your priorities accordingly.  And resist the temptation to give your attention to too many things at once.

For example, say you have three very important items on your to-do list for the week.  Rather than trying to tackle all three in the same day, picking one thing to focus on each day will increase your likelihood of completing all three tasks.

Paring down your daily to-do list can help focus your efforts as well.  At the start of the day, review each item on your list.  Ask yourself what would happen if “this” doesn’t get done today?  This exercise can help you determine which items, tasks, or projects can be shifted to a future date or even set aside for a future season, allowing you to focus on what matters most now.

The process of setting priorities is all about identifying what’s most important, protecting what’s most important, and focusing on what’s most important.  A process that can provide aid in navigating the rapids of the day-to-day and make the journey a more enjoyable adventure.