Ever notice how a small thing, ignored, can turn into a big thing? This naturally applies with wheel alignment. What you don’t feel when you’re driving is absorbed by the tires but wears down traction and stability. Before you know it, sections of your tires are worn out and you have to replace the tire even when good tread remains.
Ignored alignments are little things that create bigger problems. Misorganized priorities are the subtle misalignments that wear out your mental energy, drain your soul, and stunt your ambition.
So how do you organize your priorities on your calendar? First of all, not everything is a priority. Don’t list everything you need to do on your weekly priority list. In The Vision Planner, there are four entries per week of Action Items to do. Don’t clutter your week with multiple activities that are not priorities. Are those activities important? Probably. And, if it’s job related, you’ll still need to do those activities so you can keep coming to work.
The key with priorities is assigning the proper level of ambition and focus that reciprocates energy into your soul to help you do excellent work in everything else. If you want to move forward with clear direction, you need to pace your strength and align it to the activities that matter most. You don’t want to assign your best strength to activities that drain your bucket the fastest.
When you align your priorities to match the direction of your core values, (read Core Value article) it’s not so much that you can eliminate activities from your calendar that you hate, it’s assigning the proper attitude and motivations to all of the activities that you have to do.
Here’s how I define motivations that accompany day-to-day activities.
Want To – you look forward to these activities because they fuel you, they are easy for you, they are aligned with your strengths, and they fit into the vision of your life.
Get To – these activities are nice and it can be a privilege to participate in them. These activities don’t necessarily speak to your future but they fuel other aspects of your personal health such as relationship building, collaboration, technical expertise, and mental enjoyment. On the flip side, some of these activities may take a lot out of you but they help other people. It’s an honor to do these activities that make other people’s lives a little easier.
Have To – these activities are the ones that keep life moving. There’s nothing glamorous about grocery shopping but if you don’t do this, you’ll starve.. These activities are ones that keep organizations functioning. These activities aren’t necessarily hard but they are tedious and need to be organized, tracked, and reported. Boring in nature, they are the bread and butter activities that keep general life moving.
Hate To – these are the activities that drain the life out of you. You don’t see the point in them, they have no future, and are driven by another person’s emphasis of importance. These activities may be extremely hard for you to do because you lack skills or support. Activities like this may be physically demanding and wear you down. The timing of these activities can come at terrible times of the day, when your internal rhythm is not in sync with them.
Before you prioritize your activities for your future months, track your activities in the past months to see where your strength and energy went. Download this resource, print one for each month. Look at the last three to six months of your activities and plot your activities in the quadrants that match how you felt about them.
Now, calibrate how you want to change your strength and energy in your future schedule. How will you trim activities in the have to and hate do quadrants? How will you add activities in the want to and get to quadrants?
If you don’t have much control, yet, in the activities on your calendar, how can you adjust your attitude to reflect excellence in each of these activities? For example, here are some attitude adjustments I’ve used when doing activities in these quadrants.
Want To – I’m pouring most of my energy into these activities. I’m going to do them incredibly well and look for more places to schedule these activities.
Get To – I’m grateful for the opportunities to do these activities. They don’t necessarily fuel my future but can support my health and perspective as I participate in them. These are not high on my priority list to get on my calendar but I value the moments I have to do these things.
Have To – I’m going to do these activities as fast as I can to get them done. I’ll put them in specific hours in my daily calendar to make sure they get finished. Procrastination does me no favors in these activities, they need to get done and they still need to be done right. I just don’t have to like them. I focus on the process of getting them done efficiently…so I can look for ways to do the things I want to do.
Hate To – I have to put on my thankful perspective in these activities. While I hate doing them, I’m thankful I have the capacity and ability to do them. I may have no choice in doing these activities but I have to focus on the end result, not the processes in between. I’ll probably be irritated, frustrated at times, towards these activities but from a faith standpoint, I also need to do these activities as unto the Lord. God knows what I’m wired for but he will refill me with grace to do these things that drain the life out of me.
If you apply the right attitude to each activity, now you can discuss alignment with colleagues and supervisors to adjust activities to match your direction. This isn’t a guarantee that your schedule or tasks will immediately change; you just have some ways below to address how things might change according to your activity schedule.
Want To – what opportunities exist to add to my calendar? Are there projects that I can speak into, processes I can help develop, or people that I need to collaborate with to make these activities possible? How can I demonstrate that my skills are a match for these activities? Can I secure the support of people around me to do these things?
Get To – what functions can I participate in to help other people do well? Are there committees that need my help? Are there short staffed projects that need people? Can I assist with something that benefits the big picture?
Have To – are there people with administrative skills that can help me? Are there people with technical skills or specific knowledge that can do any of the projects that take me a long time? Can I release any of the projects that I do well to someone that might not do it as well as me? Can I provide adequate instruction for others to pick up these projects and do them well?
Hate To – am I doing this project because there is no one else available? Can we question the validity of this project in terms of future viability? Are we doing something for someone that they should be doing themselves? Can we revisit the “why” of this project and build importance into the vision of it?
The goal of your schedule isn’t to completely eliminate all of the have to and hate to activities, the goal is to increase the want to activities that fuel you to do all the other stuff.
We are not going to get out of doing the mundane, boring, or unpleasant tasks in life. We can however, refocus our strength and energy into the activities that are important to us while safeguarding our power against the activities that steal joy and perspective.
This is the secret of identifying your priorities. The activities that fuel you are the activities you prioritize. The rest of the activities you can schedule, get them done, and minimize your energy towards them. Don’t let the mundane minutiae of life steal the strength you were created with to change the world.
The Vision Planner’s components for every week:
Goals for this week – one main sentence to apply to your week. “Complete the project.” “Do the presentation.” “Crush it.”
Action things to do – top four (or less) priorities for your week. Keep it simple.
What do I need to get? – list the resources you need (if applicable) to do the activities for the week. You can’t build a house without materials. Equip your activities with the resources you need.
Special appointments this week – if applicable, mark the significant appointments you’ll participate in this week. This should be intentionally collaborative, relationally strengthening, and contain growth possibilities.
Schedule – this is the place where the above strategy deteriorates into work. Place the top priorities, resource errands, and appointments in these spots. Date and time are provided. Don’t forget!
You can purchase The Vision Planner in nine different covers. Buy it today.
Download the sample page here: