Moving from Time Management to Priority Management

Goalsetting, and thus accomplishing things, has been something I’ve heard about since I was a little kid. It wasn’t just the big goals that were important - it was (and still is) my mother continually preaching about the idea of setting small and intermediate goals that lead to the big objectives in life. I can’t thank her enough for laying this groundwork since I was a young boy.

But where things always seem to fall apart for me is the concept of “time management.” I certainly studied it enough on multiple levels of my educational life. I am struck first and foremost by the title “time management.”  To be candid, I’ve never believed in the notion. I find  myself asking a simple question to someone else, real or imagined,  “How much time do you have and how is that different than the 24 hours I have?”

Maybe there’s a doctrine out there that I’m not aware of, but I’ve always been a believer in “Priority Management.”  We all have the same amount of time each day. The question is how we spend it. 

I find it incredibly helpful to keep a notecard in my back pocket with the things I need to do. On the front side are the immediate things---what do I have to accomplish in the next 24-to-48 hours?  On the backside of the card are the less timely goals or “to do’s.” While everything is listed somewhere, I’m able to focus on the most immediate priorities, the things that can’t wait while at the same time always keeping in mind the longer-term tasks that need to be done. And it’s not uncommon that an item might go back or forth from the front to the back, or back to front, a few times depending on the changing landscape of my life.

Why do I do this? Because I want my focus to be on the priorities that are most important now. But as my Mom always taught me, you’ve got to keep in mind the next series of steps, or goals, that will get you to your long-term objective.

Try it sometime. Maybe not with a notecard but order the things you need to do by priority and immediacy to create your own Priority Management Process.