3 Facts About Priorities No One Wants to Admit
A young man has been dreaming of a career in software engineering since he was a kid; he used to tell a high school computer programming teacher, “Companies around the world will depend on my software one day,” and now, in his first year, he's studying computer science at a prestigious university, and he finally has a chance to turn his dream into reality.
A young man's experience in prioritization and focus
He wakes up every morning full of enthusiasm and positive intentions, and the first thing that comes to mind is studying. He says to himself, "I must read this chapter today," but first, he needs to eat breakfast and drink coffee, and then he says, "Well, I'm ready now."
He sits down and opens his book, but then the phone rings, and his friend asks, "Are we having lunch today together?" He agrees, sets a meeting date for noon, and then sits down again to read. Still, he remembers that he did not exercise yesterday and said, "It will take only forty-five minutes to activate my mind and be ready; after that, I will be ready for a few hours of diligent study." He puts on his sneakers, takes his headphones and heads to the sports club on campus.
When he comes back, he takes a shower and prepares again to study. He opens the book and reads the first sentence, remembering that he forgot to send the pictures that he promised his mother he would send, thinking that it would take only a few minutes, so he quickly turns on his computer and logs into his Gmail. Before he has time to send the email, he receives a chat notification from his old high school classmate who has not spoken to him for six months, and after a conversation that lasts 45 minutes, he sends the e-mail to his mother and returns to his book.
He glances at the wall clock and realizes he must leave within 30 minutes to meet his friend for lunch. Then, he says to himself that it is useless to start a focused study session by interrupting it after only 30 minutes. He convinces himself that it is better to postpone the study until after lunch, so he logs in to an online discussion forum where he participates, responds to some messages from his friends and then goes to meet his friend. When he returns from lunch after an hour and a half, he feels tired and gets up to prepare another cup of coffee.
As he sits down with his book and a fresh cup of coffee, he repeatedly repeats the phrase “focus on your priorities” in his mind, opens the book, and reads the first paragraph. His neighbor knocks on his door. When he opens the door, the neighbor says, “Open the local news channel; the apartment complex at the end of the street is burning." He thinks about it for a second. Then he puts the book aside and turns on the TV to address himself: “This will only take a second,” and so another day passes.
A young woman's experience with prioritization and focus
She wakes up early every morning, carries the soccer ball, and heads outside before brushing her teeth, washing her face, or even eating. She passes the ball between her feet without stopping until she reaches the number 50 because an old high school coach told her that the greatest soccer player, Mia Hamm, used to do this. When she finishes, she bathes, drinks a glass of milk with protein, and heads to the football field.
Her positivity is contagious; her eyes are always radiating with satisfaction and vitality. In her opinion, it's all about balance and finding a way to balance our long-term ambitions with our momentary pleasure.
She stays silent during university lectures, focuses entirely on the professor, and takes notes more diligently than most students. Although she rarely raises her hand to participate, when she does, her question or comment usually increases the professor's respect for her.
She spends her time outside the classroom in her dorm, in the library, or on the football field, focusing on her priorities; she reads, writes, learns, and practices; she adjusts her mind and body with constant force.
She takes breaks at lunchtime, and then she may meet her friends. After that, she returns to work, turns the pages, takes notes, taps the keys on her laptop and continues to work until her eyes are tired. She then gets up and rolls the ball 25 times and then returns to work, and again she spends another two hours until she finds it difficult to concentrate or her stomach hurts from hunger, so she gets up and knocks on her friend's door in the next dorm room to talk for a while.
She talks about her day and the things that interest her enthusiastically; it could be about something new she learned, an entrepreneurial idea, football, someone she met on campus, or a song she heard. When they finish chatting, she goes back to her dorm room; she thinks, reads an inspiring book, listens to music, plays the guitar, or works on the song she has been writing leisurely for the past few weeks. When she has to go to sleep, she tucks herself in and sleeps happily in a satisfied moment about the day, excited for tomorrow.
Some cruel facts about our priorities
We fill our time, our pages on social media, and our days with different ways of distraction. We often do this only to avoid doing the things that must be done and to avoid feeling uncomfortable when we face the workload we must accomplish. Once we feel some discomfort, we escape to the first thing that draws our attention and distracts us. Still, this habit gradually eliminates our good intentions and real potential, ignoring our dreams and priorities and eventually making us feel sorry for another day we wasted.
Most of us suffer from a mismatch of priorities. In a survey of 700 students, they were asked how much joy their daily activities sent them, and as you might expect, the pleasure associated with work commitments was less than the fun activities, but surprisingly, most students said that many fun activities did not make them happy and satisfied.
For example, most said they had more fun spending time with family or working on a project they loved than watching TV and browsing social media. Yet these same students admitted spending more time watching TV and browsing social media than participating in activities that provide them greater happiness and satisfaction.
We end up wasting our time without a goal or being distracted by things that will make us regret them, while we may not distract ourselves in the same ways. Most of us regret wasting our time foolishly, and you must have also felt something similar because you may have spent an hour browsing social media or watching TV in vain.
Some may say that our tendency to waste time constantly reveals our real priorities. We prefer distraction and entertainment to anything else, but this is not true. Instead, what is happening is wrong in the decision-making process, and to avoid feeling upset in the present, we unconsciously train ourselves to avoid the present moment. We think about the past and future much more than we think about today and about the social lives of others instead of our own. We are physically in one place but mentally in another. Without conscious presence and focus, we spend the present moment without thinking about activities that are not worthwhile and lack purpose and joy.
Three Facts About Our Priorities No One Wants to Admit
1. "Too busy" is an excuse for poor time management
There is a big difference between busyness and productivity; do not confuse movement with progress. For example, the rocking horse continues to move but does not progress forward, so do not be a rocking horse. The reason for most of your preoccupation is poor management of your time. Sometimes, you must reject good things to be able to work later on the important things, because you can not do everything, so be vigilant and choose what you work on wisely.
Learn to manage yourself and focus on your priorities, because what you focus on stands out in your life. There are, in each moment, several small things trying to attract your attention, and they are divided into two categories: things that are priorities and things that are not.
You'll never get more done by working more on everything you find in front of you. Our time is limited. You must follow specific plans that measure and track the most important priorities and results. So if you want to be less busy and more successful, before you ask yourself how to make something more efficient, ask first if you need to do it in the first place.
Feeling that you are working without a result is often the reason for accepting a lot of responsibilities. We all have obligations, but you can only find the right pace by managing the things you accept to accomplish, so stop accepting when you want to refuse. You can't always be nice, or people will take advantage of you; sometimes you have to set clear boundaries.
You may have to decline some requests for favors, work projects, community activities, joining committees or volunteer groups, or some other activities that seem worthwhile. It may be difficult for you to refuse when these things are worthwhile. Still, you must, because the alternative is that you will perform moderately or poorly in each of them and feel nervous and frustrated. You will not get enough sleep, and your focus will decline due to fatigue. Eventually, you will reach the breaking point.
2. We spend a lot of time talking about our priorities and a little time working on them
If you want to attract positive changes to your life, you have to act accordingly, and if you know what you want your life to look like, you have to do things that contribute to that. Just having a vision is useless unless you do something about it.
If this great vision is in your head, it will hurt you more than it benefits you because your subconscious mind knows you are procrastinating on something important. This necessary work that you continue to postpone will cause you tension, anxiety, and fear and usually lead to more procrastination. Thus, you become the hostage of a vicious circle that continues to aggravate until you break it by taking action.
Remember that you cannot achieve a great result at once, but you can achieve it when you work on it gradually. Through repetition, your small actions will have great power, and you will become skilled in everything you repeatedly do. Every day allows you to follow habits that help you succeed, regardless of your priorities or your personal definition of success.
3. Giving priority, by mistake, to rest for the time being rather than long-term satisfaction
Think about the most common problems we deal with in our lives: laziness, lack of exercise, unhealthy diets, procrastination, and so on. In most cases, such problems are caused not by a physical illness but by a mental impairment that drives us to try to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
Most of us dream of results without thinking about the work that must precede them, but we cannot reach a destination without taking a journey, and the journey always has a price, such as the time and energy needed to take a step forward every day. So instead of dreaming about what you want now, ask yourself first, “What am I willing to give up to get what I want?” or for those inevitably difficult days, “What is worth suffering for?”
Think about it: if you want strong muscles, you must endure the pain of exercise, sweating, spending long hours in the gym, and eating healthy meals. If you want to create a successful business, you must also be ready to stay up late nights and deal with deals, stressful business decisions, and the possibility of failure several times before you learn what you need to know to succeed in the long term.
If you want something in life, you must also be willing to bear the price of getting it, and you must be willing to put in the effort and work until you achieve your goal; otherwise, the dream is useless.
This may mean losing stability and comfort for a while. It may mean not eating what you want, not sleeping as much as you need for weeks in a row, or getting out of your comfort zone a lot. It may mean sacrificing certain relationships, having the courage to form new relationships, accepting people's ridicule, and spending time alone in isolation. Still, solitude is a blessing that enables us to achieve great things; it gives you the space you need, and everything else is a test of how much you want to achieve your dream.
If you really want something, you will do it, despite the discomfort, rejection and difficulties you will face, and you will feel that every step you take toward progress is better than anything else you can imagine.
You'll see that the journey itself presents the challenges rather than the path, and that the finish line is worthwhile. So again, if you really want something, keep going. There is no greater feeling in the world than progress.
In conclusion
No one is immune to the above things; every person sometimes allows distractions to waste their time and to stand in the way of their priorities, but it takes training only to realize this and then more training to get back on track.
Learn to live a simpler life without the aimless busyness that people fill their lives with, and this will allow you to focus on what is really useful and live a life that is not characterized by constant haste, anxiety, and tension but by thinking, creativity, and communication with the people and projects that matter most to you.
We can change our lives by resetting our priorities and building healthy habits to support them. If you feel overwhelmed and stressed a lot, try to rethink how you spend your time and replace the useless distractions with purposeful activity.