Welcome back to the Remodel Your Reality Challenge! Now that you’ve started to reclaim your energy, it’s time to decide how you’re going to use it. Over the next few posts, I’d like to challenge you to stop managing your time. Instead, I’d like you to consider managing your priorities.
A priority is something that is important to you, or something that needs your attention in the present. Your personal priorities define how you invest time within your life. Your professional priorities guide your allocation of the time committed to your work.
Making the decision to invest your time according to your priorities not only supports the effective use of each moment, it also paves the road to a high-quality life. It creates a structure for you to make decisions that help you experience life on your terms and gives you permission to turn away from requirements that don’t support your aspirations.
One Thing To Think About
It’s easier to use your time effectively when you begin to view it as a finite commodity that you have the choice to spend—or invest. Establishing a list of priorities for your life and work, and making commitments based on that list, allows the things that are important to you to exist in your life.
One Question To Answer
At the end of each week, do you feel exhausted, frustrated, and burnt-out? Do you sometimes wonder why you can’t seem to get control and question what is wrong with you? If so, you have not proactively decided how you’d like to use your time, and it’s possible that a good deal of your day is committed to other people’s demands, to items that seem urgent, or in response to what you believe is expected of you. If you’ve taken this approach to managing your calendar, you probably have very little time left over to invest in what matters to you.
One Challenge To Take
Set aside twenty to thirty minutes to move through this activity. Try to arrange for an uninterrupted period of time, which allows you to consider the areas of your life and work that are truly important to you.
Create a list that reflects who you are, not a list that reflects what you think other people expect of you. Some examples include:
- Personal Priorities: Spending quality time with my family, taking time out for fun and recreation, taking care of my health.
- Professional Priorities: Leading and mentoring my employees, developing new business, continuing to learn and grow my skill base.
When you make the choice to honestly define what matters to you, the possibility for life and work balance is created. It’s quite likely that your schedule will remain full, even after moving through this exercise. The difference is that you will be busy with things that matter to you. You’ll be living your priorities. As a result, you’ll have the opportunity to experience a much greater level of joy, satisfaction, and happiness each day.
Until next time, take care!
Kim
