5 Steps to Prioritizing Your Time To Create The Life You Want

It is not easy to accomplish all of the things you want to complete, and to have all of the experiences you would like to have throughout the week. There is so much you’d like to do, so many places you want to go to, and so many people you’d like to see, that it will be difficult to meet all of your expectations.

Therefore, you need to prioritize the goals you have written so that you can focus on what is most important to you.

Prioritizing your goals can help make it easier to maintain balance while striving to reach fulfillment in your life. Instead of simply doing whatever next pops into your mind, you can map out your week in a way that balances your goals according to the priority you set for them.  

5 Steps to Prioritizing Your Time and Goals:

1. List the goals that are most important to you in each of the five key life areas in the e-book, Build Your World.

   Once you have listed your goals in each life area (how to set attainable goals is discussed in the first chapter of the e-book), put a number next to each life area to rate it in order of priority.

   For instance, put a “1” next to “Personal” if spending personal time is first in importance to you, and a “5” next to “Finances” if that is fifth in importance to you. 

2. List all of the activities, directly related to your goals, that you generally do during the week. These can include budgeting, shopping, meeting with friends, exercising, etc..

3. Match each of your listed activities to the prioritized major area of life to which it corresponds. For example, if you listed “exercising” as an activity, put it under the major area of life of “Health.”

4. Estimate the number of hours spent on each activity during the week, and write that number down next to each activity. If you spent 5 hours exercising, put “5 hours” next to that activity. Total up the hours spent for all activities in each major area of life, and put “Total Hours Spent” for that area.

   Take a look at the hours for your activities, and compare how they match up with your priorities for each of the life areas.

   If you have 15 hours of activities for “Career” (outside of a job, since usually those hours are set), and you rated it as a “4”, and you have 12 hours of activities for “Personal”, and you rated it as a “2”, then you will need to readjust your schedule so that your activity hours spent on your goals for “Personal” is adequate for the level of priority to which you assigned it. 

5. Write down the number of hours that you would like to spend on each goal. For example, if you put “3 hours” down for “talking with friends”, and “Social” is listed as your “1” priority, then you may want to take a couple of hours away from another goal to put there.

   Keep in mind, the number of hours you assign to all of the goals in each major life area should add up to the total number of hours that you want to have for that area, and the total number of hours should decrease for each major area of life as they descend in order of priority.

Example - Comparing what you are doing now with what you want to do

(You will need to view the example on Landscape (horizontal) view on your mobile phone)

                                                            Total Hours Spent                  Total Hours Wanted

1  Personal                                          12                                             20

        Goal Setting                               5                                               10

        Self-Help Reading                     4                                               5

        Organizing                                  3                                               5

2. Health                                             10                                             15

        Working out                             4                                               7

        Walking                                    3                                               5          

        Shopping for healthy foods  3                                               3

3. Social                                               10                                             12

        Social gatherings                      4                                               4

        Talking with Friends                   3                                               5

        Volunteering                               3                                               3

4.  Career (outside of work) 15                                             10        

        Job Search                 5                                             5

        Home based business             10                                             5

5. Finances                                          7                                               5

        Budgeting                                 2                                               2

        Paying Bills                              4                                               2

        Tracking expenses                    1                                               1          

Conclusion

Now, take your goals and mark off time for them each week on your calendar. At the end of each week go over your progress and make any needed adjustments.

You no longer have to waste time just doing what pops in your mind. Now you have a map – a detailed plan and structure for your goals as you put together the priorities that will create the life that you want.   

Keep in mind, this is not a perfect system. Sometimes quality is more important than quantity, regarding the number of hours you prioritize for each key life area. However, it can give you a starting point and outline for balancing out your life the way you would like.