What are your priorities in your schedule? If you aren't sure or assume you have none, you may want to think again. Most people have priorities but they don't realize it. If you would never leave the house without a shower, you are making hygiene a priority. If you never fail to get your children their breakfast and make their lunches before they go to school, then caring for them is a priority. When you go to work every day, your job is a priority.
Often we take care of things that are a priority without even realizing it or considering them as such. We just do them automatically because we know they need to get done; this means they're a priority.
While work and children and hygiene and household chores and things such as these obviously should be a priority, it's amazing how often someone will allow something else to become a priority when perhaps it should instead take a backseat.
Let's look at some common examples of this so you can understand what happens when priorities get confused.
RECREATION
Everyone needs recreation and relaxation; without it, people get nervous, anxious, stressed, and overly tired. Recreation can also stimulate the imagination and strengthen bonds between people as they spend time together.
Talking about priorities does not mean that you should never indulge in recreation or just rest. However, there is a problem when it becomes more of a priority than working toward your goals, or when you indulge in it so often that you're left with little time to do other things.
And recreation doesn't need to necessarily mean going to the bar or going out to play tennis with friends. It can also mean watching television, surfing the internet, reading, engaging in hobbies, walking around the mall, working on cars, talking to friends on the phone, and so on. When these things begin to interfere with your specific plans or goals, or when they monopolize
your time or are being done far too often, then they've taken a priority with you.
TIME WASTERS AND DISTRACTIONS
Along with recreation, we may allow things that waste our time and that do nothing but distract us to become a priority. For instance, when shopping for something new for the home we may research a few options and decide what is best. But then we have the urge to research every single option we have and to research these things well past the point of necessity. We may think that this should be a priority because we want to know all our choices, but chances are we're just wasting time with useless information.
Other distractions might be hobbies and pursuits that have no real purpose and which we have no need for in the first place. We decide one day that we love interior decorating and start learning all about it, with no real intent of pursuing it as a career. This priority has now wasted valuable time that could have been used to research something that really matters and that would really contribute to our life overall.
OTHER PEOPLE
When do other people become a priority and when should they be put off? There's no easy answer to that as there are times when other people should take priority over what we want to do. A sick child or family member, a friend going through a crisis, and even volunteer work may be a priority and with good reason.
Typically however we allow others to become a priority over ourselves when there really is no reason for that to happen. Children need attention and to be cared for but they also need to respect an adult's time as well and can often entertain themselves. As they get older of course they should be taking care of many of their own needs such as making food or doing laundry.
When thinking of other people and how their needs take priority over our plans for our schedule, it's good to consider if we're really responding to a friend in crisis or just to someone's need for attention. Your friend is bored and so he or she calls you up. If you can schedule in recreation then there's nothing wrong with that but just dropping everything you're doing because they ask means they're taking a top priority.
Other people may take a priority whenever they ask something of you. Your church needs a volunteer and you automatically sign up. Your boss wants to know if someone can take on an extra project and you say yes without even really thinking about it. Whatever anyone else asks, you just automatically do without a second thought.
People can become a priority when we allow their demands to come first, when there is no real reason to do this. They may also become a priority if we allow them to interrupt, to distract us, to tell us that our goals will never be reached, or to discourage us in any way. Their thinking and their needs take priority over our own and this is not the way to maximize one's time.
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