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What are your top priorities in life?

It’s a fascinating thing to think about because most of the time we don’t set priorities – we just do what we’re faced with next or whatever flies onto our radar or right in front of our eyes.

We deal with whatever happens to shout the loudest whenever we happen to be listening.

The problem of course is that the loudest things are often not what we should be doing.

It’s the quiet things the things we often ignore (through choice sometimes) that either cause us to come a cropper or at the very least stop us from becoming the kind osuccessful person we’d like to be.

So it pays to pay some attention to your priorities.

Here are a few suggestions:

Important and urgent

Covey’s QuadrantsStephen Covey describes a high-level prioritization scheme in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In this scheme, tasks are categorized by four quadrants:

* QI – Important and Urgent
* QII – Important but Not Urgent
* QIII – Not Important but Urgent
* QIV – Not Important and Not Urgent

Dr. Covey notes that highly effective people make time for the QII activities, and that doing so can reduce the time spent in other quadrants. While QI – QIV prioritization doesn’t help you decide which QI activity to do first and which to do second, and so on, it can be very enlightening to find out which quadrants your tasks are in. Source

Many of us end up spending a great deal of our time in quadrant 3, chasing around dealing with urgent but unimportant issues. If not we quite often find ourselves in Q4 as a way to procrastinate. It feels like we’re busy and productive but we’re not.

Our time is best spent in Q2 because ultimately this will reduce the time we spend in all the other quadrants.

Eating your frog first

Popularized in Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog!, the idea here is that you tackle the biggest, hardest, and least appealing task first thing every day, so you can move through the rest of the day knowing that the worst has already passed. Source Lifehacker

This makes so much sense. Doing those things first that cause you the most pain or discomfort will free you up to do other things. It will prevent you from procrastinating.

Putting the big rocks in first

The idea here is that all the small tasks you attend to every day don’t leave room for the big things that would make the most difference to your life.

In this video you see this principle being demonstrated with actual rocks.

When none of this matters

These are all great for prioritizing work load but how do you prioritize life? What comes first?

Do you put family first and your business second?

But what about you? Where are you in your list of priorities?

Probably last!

Here’s the thing: Unless you start to put yourself first, there could be nothing left of the other two to worry about.

Priority #1: You – It’s absolutely vital that you look after number 1.

You need to be at your best physically and mentally, but you won’t be anywhere near your best if your relationships are strained, your health is deteriorating and you’re living in an environment of constant chaos and disorder. Sure, you can get by like that for a while but it’s not a good strategy for long term success.

You are amazing and fantastic and totally awesome with huge potential to achieve great things, but unless you’re emotionally and mentally resilient, with a strong sense of self-belief you’re unlikely to do what needs to be done to realize your potential. Source

Sort your life out first and decide what yoiur personal priorities are and you’ll find it much easier to work in quadrant 2 or to eat your frog.

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