What Actually Matters Most

Have you ever had a racetrack day—a day where you spend a lot of time moving but don’t get anywhere? It’s so easy to putter busily through your day and even check things off your list, and still feel dissatisfied with how you spent your time. That dissatisfaction often comes because we have things we’d like to do that truly matter to us, but somehow less-important activities supersede those things. We often talk about spending time on the things that matter most, but how do we ensure that happens? Here is one way:

Discover

Most people haven’t taken the time to truly discover what matters most to them. It’s an exercise in reflection that takes time, but is really worth it.

Write a list of the various roles you play each week. That list would probably start with your titles: your profession, husband/wife, son/daughter, parent, coach, church member, aspiring photographer, neighbor, and friend. Then, begin to list other things that matter to you such as: artist, athlete, gardener, homemaker, student, traveler, and outdoorsman. That’s a lot of roles. You probably aren’t an expert in all of your roles, but you’ve just listed the areas of your life where you’d like to spend your time.

Now that you know how you spend your time, take a few minutes and write why those roles are important to you. As you do this, you’ll start to discover more about who you are at your core.

Everything we do stems from one or several of our core values. As you read through your list of why your roles are important, you’ll start to see trends in your answer. For example: perhaps one of the reasons your job is important to you is because it allows you to express some creativity while you provide for the needs of your family. You’ll also discover that you have a similar reason for your role as an aspiring photographer. You’ll then realize that you value creativity in your life. It’s important, then, that you regularly spend time in creative pursuits if you want a sense of fulfillment.

As you work through this exercise, you’ll find that you have several powerful core values that motivate your actions. Some of them may surprise you. These values make us who we are, and should ideally, act as the foundation for all of our decisions. They can help us get back on track when activities pop into our schedules that don’t align with our core values.

Reflect

Now that you have a list of values or priorities, ask yourself the following questions:

• What are my biggest priorities? (Of all the values I’ve listed, which of them matter most to me?)
• Do my day-to-day tasks reflect those priorities?
• How do I spend the majority of my time?
• Am I doing the things I truly want to be doing?
• Is what matters most to me evident by how I spend my time?
• Can I do more of the things that matter most?
• What activities can I cut from my life to ensure I have the time for my top priorities?

This activity is a lot like deep cleaning. Before we can truly organize a room, we need to take everything off the shelf, wash it down, and carefully replace only the items that matter most to us. The rest end up getting recycled or thrown out. We need to consistently do the same with our activities, because our time is at least as limited as our space. We don’t shouldn’t waste it on actions that are inconstant with our core values.

Pursue

Now that you have your list of values, choose one or two that you’d like to strengthen and set goals related to it. Sticking with photography as our example, perhaps you’d like to learn more about ambient and artificial lighting as a way of increasing your creativity. Or perhaps you value strong family ties and choose to focus on that value by setting a goal to spend more individual time with your spouse or children.

Break your goals into small actions and schedule them in your daily planner. Because these tasks are based on your goals and rooted in your values, they will always take high priority on your schedule. This will ensure that they actually happen. If you find that you need to reschedule one of these tasks make sure it is being replaced by an even higher priority. As you do this, you will find that you have rooted out the activities that kill time and replaced them with activities that strengthen your core.

Now you aren’t just spinning your wheels—you’re actually going where you want to go.