Priorities

Number one with a bullet on the priorities list, along with her cute brothers.

I've been thinking a lot about priorities lately, thoughts mostly spurred by this insightful and humorous post on the subject. The gist of it is that priorities cannot be assigned to things, they can only be observed in action. Whatever you did first this morning, that was your priority. That thing that's been languishing at the so-called "top" of your to-do list for the last six months? Not.

What's great about this is how it helps you clarify what you really want and need to get done, and see whether or not you are taking the necessary steps--even if they're baby steps--toward those goals. Now I realize that there is a yawning chasm of literature on efficiency and productivity out there, and I'm not quite ready to jump in and embark on a full-scale GTD makeover of my life. Not yet, anyway, but I've realized I do need a better plan.

When you wake up and realize you have a house to run and three kids to parent and a (very) part time job that needs way more of you and maybe some other writing gigs you'd like to do on the side, well that can be a tad overwhelming, and it can be a lot easier to just sit down with the newspaper or hit the blogs and let all that stressful stuff slide for just one more day.

But if I'm keeping an ongoing inventory of all those real priorities and the possible ways to move each one forward a little bit each day, it helps narrow down the answers to the question "What should I do now?" from a million or so to a couple dozen. Which is somewhere to start, at least.