Manage Your Priorities to Achieve Your Goals
How many times do you get sidetracked in a day? This often happens when you put other people’s priorities ahead of your own. When you prioritize your priorities, then you get so much more done with less stress. In this video, I talk about my struggles with this issue and what I’ve done to deal with it. Learn the 3 questions I ask myself and that you can use to find clarity about where to put your attention. Watch Manage Your Priorities to Achieve Your Goals.
Transcript:
Welcome. In this video, I’d like to give you a tip on how to improve your productivity, progress and effectiveness. I’ve struggled with managing my priorities over the years, and want to share a tip about how I’ve learned to handle this area so that you may get more done, and have less stress.
I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a focus mentor, writer and hypnotherapist. These videos are dedicated to empower you to focus and align your heart with your vision so you can achieve your goals.
There are times when I’ve gotten sidetracked in a day. Before working on my priority for the day, I’ve checked my email and found a client’s message asking a question, and decided to answer it right then. Or my work flow was interrupted by a follow up call from someone I’d met networking. Or my phone would notify me of a message on LinkedIn, and I’d immediately answer it.
And of course, each of these led to other demands on my attention from other people. Has this ever happened to you? You fall into the trap of satisfying other people’s immediate demands, and not your urgent concerns?
Each time, I mistakenly thought that if I took care of all of these other details right then, I’d be free to focus on my priority task for the day. But what generally happened was that I found myself scrabbling with distractions from others all day long, paying attention to other people’s priorities. Not my priorities.
I learned that if I started out my day scattered, the rest of the day would often continue that way. I would be running all day to catch up with myself and what was important for me and my business.
Unless you pay attention to your intention first, and prioritize your priorities, you’ll fall victim to someone else’s agenda. This is true in your personal and professional lives. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t deal with those folk and what they request of you. Just that you do it in your time frame, when it’s convenient to you, after you’ve worked on what’s important to you and your business.
So here’s the tip. There are 3 simple questions you can ask yourself so you know if you’re working on your priorities or someone else’s.
- Will the distraction interfere with your priority for the day, such as your task or project? Yeah, I know, this sounds really simplistic. This is the basic question to ask for you to realize you’re being distracted. If the answer is yes, the next couple of questions will help you decide if the interruption can be dealt with now or later.
- Can the distraction be delayed a few hours? Whether it’s a message, a phone call or something else. If it can be delayed, set it aside, focus on your priority and respond later.
- Is it imperative for you to deal with right now, such as, will it bring you money or customers immediately? Now, that would be a good reason to interrupt your flow and respond, right? But if not, set it aside and focus on your priority and respond later.
See the theme? If you can respond later, set it aside and focus on your priority first. These questions can help you gain clarity about where you need to put your attention and what to do in each one.
When I started using these questions, I was much more productive, and less frustrated. When you manage your priorities, by prioritizing them, you’ll get a lot more done, with a lot less stress.
Thank you for watching. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you’d like to be notified when I release more videos on mindset, motivation and empowerment, please like my channel and click on the bell. As always, stay focused.
Read the accompanying article, Develop Self-Mastery by Managing Your Attention.