Generally, as we approach life, we’re likely to place some expectations on ourselves and how we want to achieve things. It’s a feeling that comes with eagerness, anticipation, and sometimes anxiety.
What do I need first?
How do I achieve this first?
I need to work towards this goal or vision first, and so on. Priority is the efforts and deliberate steps we take towards a particular goal, to give one pursuit or activity more attention over another, at a given time.
The salient questions to ask in discerning priority are;
What am I giving my time to?
Who am I giving my time to?
What do I want to achieve at a given time?
When must I make myself, my time and my resources available for a given pursuit?
When and how do I protect myself against things that I don’t need?
How do I give my attention to a task or activity in order to achieve the outcome I desire?
The steps towards building a sustainable, holistic, and empowering identity must be deliberate, and the manner through which we handle that may be the gateway to establish credibility and success in our endeavours. The priorities we set would determine our physical and emotional bandwidth in achieving our set goal.
At the executive level, the definition of priority has evolved after the global pandemic, which made people shift their work habit mentality and embrace remote or hybrid models of work. Engagement and motivation are recognised more than long hours of work and false notion of busyness. This means that impact, flexibility, and trust have been prioritized over excessive hours of burn out, as the main ingredients of productivity.
The ‘hustle culture’, which became popular during the great recession of 2008, made people take multiple tasks, which promoted overtime at work and believed to be the gateways towards alleviation of poverty. But doing things and being productive are entirely different, and their results are different as well.
The non-negotiable fact is the need to prioritise ourselves in order to perform our best. Every child, every youth, or adult needs to build healthy habits that prioritize you, your well-being, health, and happiness. The earlier we all understand this, the better and greater we can create valuable and satisfying outputs.
Another top priority is spending time with family and friends, building relationships, and creating lovely memories. We must know when to put the phones down, when to turn off the television, and when to switch off the official mode for the people that matter. These less structured schedules can be very beneficial in building an overall fruitful direction in life.
Aside from prioritizing our well-being and family, we need to prioritize our future goals and plan towards our purpose and passion. Research has shown that 80% of the things we do first are less important, trivial, or even useless, while 20% of them are more important. It is, therefore, salient to make a deliberate step towards doing the more important things first. It starts from having a more structured schedule, to making a priority list, to identifying the urgent and important priorities, to assigning proper time in which we want to get them done.
Priority can be grouped into four categories; urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, not urgent and not important. Knowing the difference between urgent and important can make us avoid being confused and to know which to take care of first. If this is achieved, then tasks can be divided into daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. It’s also important to examine the activities in these tasks that don’t create value and try to eliminate those ones that don’t deserve our time and attention.
Children and youths must know when to ask and what to ask for at a given time or period. They must understand the difference between want and need in making their requests. They must recognize when some requests are due and when they are not. They must not yield to peer pressures and succumb to trend at the expense of value. They must be focused and not distracted by other people’s priority.
Johannesburg Wolfgang Goethe is apt on this when he says “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least” As our days are numbered, so shall our priorities be numbered and as we know ourselves and our pursuit, we should align our efforts accordingly to satisfy them.
*BIBLE VERSE*
*Deuteronomy 30:19*
*I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live*
*PROVERB*
*Do what is necessary before you do what is nice. African Proverb*
*RIDDLE*
*There were five women sitting in a room. In the same room there was a basket with five apples in it. Each woman took an apple, but one apple still remained in the basket. How could this be?*
*Amara Ann Unachukwu*
