Whatever you are doing right now is your priority. If you get up in the morning, check your blood pressure, go for a run or workout in the gym, return home and eat a healthy breakfast then your morning priority is health. If you get up and immediately view social media or your emails, then your priority is social media or emails. You can only ever have one priority and by default it has to be whatever you are doing now. The good news is that a change of priority will always release time to do a new priority. If you want to release time to get fit, then change your priority from emails to running. You can’t create time, but you can use it differently.
Here’s an example – simple but effective, like all good examples.
My priority at the moment is to write this blog. As such, in order to be effective, I must write the blog and carry on until it is finished or, and this is the important bit, my priority changes. As it happens, I am writing at the kitchen table because I know if I go out to the office at this hour it will be cold and it’s nice here in front of our middle-class Aga. If my wife asks me to go outside and put out the bins, then my answer must be no. The blog is my priority, and I am not going to release time to do anything else until it is published. After it is complete, I will look for the next priority which, in the interests, of matrimonial harmony may well be to put out the bins. That will become my priority. I don’t have time to go outside now, I’m staying here. It’s my priority.
If, on the other hand she comes to me and tell me to go outside because the house is on fire then, suddenly I am able to release the time to move. Why? My priority has changed. You see a change of priority will always release time!!!
The same is true of anything you do. What you are doing right now is your priority and I am honoured that your priority is reading this blog. I hope I don’t let you down.
We all know about priorities releasing time. The parent who is at work frantically working to get a report out or a delivery to a customer. They say they cannot release time to do anything, they are too busy. Then they get the call from the hospital to say their child is ill. Suddenly, they are able to release time. They have simply changed their priority. Their priority wasn’t their family, now it is. We can all release time if we really want to. It’s just a question of priority. Covid taught us that. How many people changed their priority during lockdown only to change it back as soon as “normality” resumed? How many of you are still prioritising healthy eating by baking sour dough bread and cooking meals from scratch? Or have emails become your priority again? Just asking.
I have committed to producing the first YouTube video on effectiveness by the end of this week. Releasing Time To Be Effective Therefore once I have finished this blog my priority is to write the script for the first post. That means everything else is not a priority.
Or should my priority be to put out the bins?
You can only have one priority at a time – make sure it’s a good one. Make sure it is the most effective one.
I’m going to press publish now and then please excuse me I need to pop outside. Those bins won’t move themselves.
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