Jolt!, Phil Cooke [reading women txt] 📗

confused with your goals. Goals are what you want to accomplish. Priorities are what is important on the way to achieving those goals. For your life to change and your goals to matter, your goals must exist within your priorities.

For instance, if your goal is a career that requires a great deal of travel but your family life is a high priority, then the two might not be a good mix. If your goal is to be financially successful but your priorities are to spend most of your time hanging out with friends, then you need to reconsider one or the other. Or if a personal priority is honesty/integrity but your boss is trying to influence you to lie on a report or to “adjust” some numbers on the accounting statement, then you’re going to have a problem.

What are your priorities? Let me show you a list to get you started. I’ve divided the list into two categories—personal priorities and business priorities. There are many more than these, but the list will help you understand what we’re talking about.

PERSONAL PRIORITIES:

BUSINESS PRIORITIES:

honesty

consideration of employees

integrity

responsibility

trust

leadership

creativity

innovation

independence

product quality

spiritual commitment

promptness

financial security

teamwork

physical health

ethics

raising children

attitude

having a strong marriage

speed

love

work accuracy

education

financial accountability

compassion

generosity

confidence

There are plenty of others, and you’ll no doubt have some that aren’t on this list. I’m not as interested in your specific personal priorities as much as that you realize that the sooner you understand your priorities, the sooner you’ll be able to move forward with real change.

Now that you have your priority list, use that list to filter all the changes in your life. Every job, every project, and every task you want to accomplish should fit within the framework of your priorities. Think of it as the boundary of integrity that surrounds your life.

Why? Because it keeps you focused on your goal and eliminates the time wasters in your life.

MANAGING YOUR PRIORITIES MEANS MANAGING YOUR TIME

At the highest levels of American business, time is valued more highly than money. That’s why CEOs of major corporations have private jets standing by at the airport. With a private jet, they can leave at the last minute, bypass all the airport security checks and ticket counters, arrive at a meeting one thousand miles away, and be back home in their own beds that night, ready to be in the office first thing in the morning. If they took a commercial flight, they would have to leave the office much earlier, endure all the hardships of modern-day travel, possibly miss the last flight back, spend the night in a local hotel, and then miss half the next day flying back home.

It’s all about time. The more time an executive can spend leading his or her company instead of sitting on an airplane, the more valuable he or she is and the more profit the company can make.

The Bondage of E-mail

Remember when we used to actually be productive? Now most employees spend their day managing e-mails. In fact, recent studies indicate that 40 percent of a typical employee’s day is spent sending or receiving e-mail. I like writer Julie Morgenstern’s advice: never check your e-mail in the morning. Julie discovered the incredible time-suck of e-mail and learned that when you check e-mail first thing in the morning, the next thing you realize is that it’s lunchtime and you’re still managing e-mail messages. She realized it’s much better to focus first on the top priority of the day. You’ll see your productivity shoot up.

The technology that was supposed to free us up has simply created handcuffs, especially when it comes to smartphones, iPads, and other handheld devices. I recently met three very successful business leaders for dinner in San Diego. Great restaurant, fabulous meal, engaging conversation—except for one thing. One of the guests simply could not put down his BlackBerry. In spite of the atmosphere, excellent dinner companions, and fascinating discussion, he was chained to the device and could only put it down long enough to occasionally take a bite of his steak.

I wanted to smash it on the floor and ask what potential message could be so important that he was willing to sacrifice being in the moment with face-to-face friends?

Short Moments Matter

A few years ago, I started focusing my time on quick but positive goals. For instance, before, if I had fifteen minutes with nothing to do, I would assume it wasn’t enough time to accomplish anything, so I would just chat with someone or get a soft drink from the kitchen. But once I began managing my time, I was amazed to learn just how much can be done in fifteen minutes. I could clean my desk, organize my files, edit a magazine article, make a phone call, back up my computer, jot down some creative new ideas, and more. With just little snippets of time, I now can harvest enormous productivity.

All because I made time a priority.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

—GOETHE

Priorities do not come second nature without our thinking about them. We have to constantly remind ourselves of priorities and keep them in the forefront of our minds. It’s not about losing our way—after all, most of us won’t suddenly wake up and lose our integrity, honesty, or desire for independence. In the rush and noise of modern living, however, it’s easy to let our priorities get pushed into the background of our lives. Even though I’ve experienced a rush of productivity and accomplishment after learning to manage my time, I still have a tendency to watch too much TV, hang out with the guys, and waste time at the computer. Good time management is a daily discipline, just like working out at the gym.

One important aspect of not managing your priorities well is that you don’t lose them all at once. Priorities are traded off a piece at a time. In the case of time management, you don’t suddenly become a slob. More likely, you show up late for an