Scrollmate

“I think these are the most important priorities for me to handle today”. ” I just need a little more time to get my priorities in line”. Commonly we use these phrases every day. Priority-for some of us, it is associated with a single commitment/task for the given time. Yet for a couple of us, there could be numerous things that are claimed to be our priorities. Some of us carry a priority list for the day. Many of us have multiple lists of priorities, categorized into the buckets of social priorities, family priorities, health priorities, and work priorities, all required to be done at the same time. Everything seems to carry equal importance! Can everything really be our “priority”?

Let’s take a deeper look into this word.

Priority means: “something that you think is more important than other things and should be dealt with first”. It seems like there must be a single thing that needs to be prioritized above all. Given that, how can we have the pluralization of a priority? At a given time, can there be a possibility of dealing with “multiple first things”? It doesn’t seem logical to me.

There is a brilliant book “Essentialism” written by Greg McKeown. From his book:

“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned…..”- Greg McKeown “Essentialism”

Although I am not certain about the history of pluralizing the word “priority”, keeping it singular would have been more logical.

After taking a small dive into this word, we might be thinking that how it matters if this noun got its pluralization, not the same time when it was introduced to the dictionary. So, let’s take a few moments to think about the effect of these words on our mindset.

We keep on working on several commitments each day. Every day we are packed up fulfilling our financial, social, health, and family requirements. We try to do everything and try to fit ourselves everywhere. There are so many things that we are convinced, are priorities for us. We do not have time or energy to sort them out. Let us take a couple of examples here. Suppose we are hosting a party at our house, and till the last moment we are busy checking our emails convincing ourselves, “Let me just see one last Email and I will be ready for the party. I know it’s all important to me!”. Another example, overbooking ourselves for a given time: we have an important project launch + our family/friends’ social meet, and some random meeting to attend which we are reluctant to say no to.

The question is when we keep on working on those “priorities”, is everything equally prime for us? I think, No. It cannot be. Everything cannot be most important. But then why do we keep on referring to those as priorities? I guess we know somewhere that if we associate the word “Prior” with something then it is going to become important for us and we are going to push ourselves hard to finish it. It is ultimately our “Do it all” mindset. We want to do everything. The mindset of “Do it all” gets built up over time. We always get appreciated and get rewarded by doing more and more in less time. We are humans and for whatever skills we get rewards, we like to pursue them. So, it is natural for us to follow the “do it all” mindset. Thus, we try to finish a lot of things at the same time and name them all our “Priorities”.

But is it practically possible to focus on multiple things at the same time? Not really! Our attention can be on one task at a time. When we say we are working on multiple things, we keep on shifting our focus from one thing to another. We might be able to finish all the tasks, but we would be stretching ourselves too thin. In a process of executing those, we would feel exhausted, overtired yet less productive, things would be out of our control, and we might develop the mindset of finishing the task for just sake of doing it.

Instead, if we have one priority for the given moment and let go of all the other tasks then we feel less overwhelmed, more focused, and more productive, we feel we have more control. We would be able to live in the moment. We perform what really matters. It requires careful consideration of choosing what is really important at that time: “Priority”. Greg McKeown in his book “Essentialism” impeccably describes the essence and importance of this mindset. It helps us understand to focus on the vital few rather than doing everything.

My friends, does it matter to get rewarded by doing everything in less time? What matters is to take control of our own lives. Life is a beautiful gift to humankind. Let us live our lives meaningfully by doing what truly matters rather than finishing up a lot of things!

Let’s prioritize our life!

Something to think about.

Thanks

Mridulika