Put your hand on your forehead. If you didn’t have a skull, you’d be cradling your prefrontal cortex. This incredible bit of brain is responsible for being responsible and for all the other managerial skills that we need to operate a human brain. I plan to explore all the skills that make up “executive function” in future blogs but today I’m prioritizing prioritization.
You may not realize how often you need this skill unless you struggle with it. If you know someone with ADHD you may have witnessed what happens when they struggle with prioritization. It goes something like this: Jo needs to pay a bill so they go to get their wallet and see a pile of papers in their purse that need filing, so they carry their papers to the office where they remember they have been meaning to dust the filing cabinet…. This may look like a case of distraction, but Jo’s brain is also struggling to prioritize the important task over all the other tasks that come up.
Many people with other mental health issues struggle with prioritizing. Someone with depression may feel that nothing matters and be unable to prioritize anything. Someone with anxiety may be unable to prioritize tasks because the worry circuits carjack the executive system to prioritize survival. This is great if you’re being chased by a wolf, but not so great when you are trying to give a presentation—a worried brain doesn’t always see the difference. A person experiencing a manic episode may feel like everything is a priority and while they think they can do everything all at once, it’s doubtful that their true priority in life is to buy one hundred gallons of bleach to clean the sidewalks of the entire neighborhood.
No matter what issues you face, in our busy society our attention is fractured by the number of choices we have for spending our limited resources. Perhaps you’ve heard the metaphor of filling a jar with rocks. You fill a jar with a pile of small stones and sand and soon there isn’t enough room for the big rocks. You put the big rocks in the jar first and then you can fit the small stones and sand in around them. No matter how you are packing your rocks, no one has a jar vast enough to fit all of them.
Prioritizing is a skill. Like any skill, practice improves performance. You can google ‘how to prioritize’ to get some helpful tips. Most of your results will tell you to make a list. Many of your results will help you increase productivity. I’m going to tell you something a little different.
First do a mindfulness exercise. Connect to your body and to the ground beneath you. After ten minutes in that centered place, you are ready to make your list. This isn’t a list of all the tasks to be done, nor a list of all the things to accomplish. Make a list of your values, your passions, and your dreams. Where else would you find your top priorities? Those are your big rocks. Those are your real priorities.
Now make your other lists. As you plan the rest of your life, notice how often the real priorities make it to the top. It will take practice to choose the big rocks first. It takes practice to create the life you want.
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