Prioritizing

It’s interesting to me how priorities change through-out your lifetime. What is good to keep in mind is to revisit them (often) and be sure you have enough time to achieve all your goals. If you don’t, it’s probably time to re-prioritize. There is nothing wrong with doing this but I do find something wrong with not giving yourself enough time to give proper attention to the things that matter most to you. I know that everyone is busy and there never seems to be enough time to get “it” all done but with a little bit of reorganization you can and feel much less stressed in the process.

It is true that I don’t have a husband or any kids, so it might be a little easier for me. However, if I had kids I would do so knowing that I would have to rethink my priorities and adjust accordingly. I believe anyone can manage their time. With that being said my recent focus has been the following:

1. Work. I HAVE to pay my bills after all.
2. Focus on my diet and exercise which includes a goal to lose some weight and then maintain my weight after that.
3. My friends. Spending time with my friends and keeping a strong interest in their lives.
4. My alone time to do nothing or anything I want.

It might not sound like much to some of you but it’s a lot to keep up with. Almost all of my time is spent on one of these four things. I make time for these and don’t bend. Doing so would leave me feeling unsatisfied and I’m not willing to do that right now. Of course work schedules me but the other things I schedule time for. I MAKE TIME FOR THESE THINGS. And everything else comes after these. These are what are important to me NOW.

More recently I added another priority…my boyfriend. For a couple weeks I started to panic that there just wasn’t enough time for him right now. It scared me to think that our timing might be off and that it wouldn’t work out. It may sound silly to think that I would rather go to Bikram yoga than to spend time with him but right now it’s very important to me that I feel good about myself which includes working out. Of course I want to spend time with him but not if I’m going to be angry at myself in the morning when I step on the scale and knew I should have gone to yoga. No, I am not obsessed with working out. It’s just where my focus is right now in life. And there is nothing wrong with that.

So…I talked to him about all of this and decided that I wanted to make him more of a priority in my life. The item that I decided would get shifted around a bit is my time to myself. I realized that even if he’s present I can still behave how I would if I were alone. I can be as lazy, grungy, messy, or as busy as I want to be and he’s cool with it. I have also shifted around my work out times to make myself more available in the evenings for him and my friends who I spend a lot of time with.

It is all beginning to work out pretty well. I still feel like I have my focus without getting burned out by other things that just aren’t as meaningful to me. Everyone has their own list of priorities and it shouldn’t be very long. I have learned that five things is about the maximum. Time is limited and attempting to do too much will leave you exhausted all the time. Maybe it’s time you listed out your priorities and think about ways to improve your focus on them and ways to cut out the other things that aren’t as important.