Day Five: Prioritzing

Today’s post is about prioritizing your goals and dreams.

You are not expected, nor are you required to be superwomen or supermen. We only have so much time allotted to us each day and only so much time allotted to us in life. This is often where I get stuck. I look at my crazy list, get overwhelmed, and my list will stay nothing more than a list. Let's push past this inclination!

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you evaluate where you should start first:

Is there anything on my list that needs to be done?

Is there anything on my list that should get done? 

Is there anything on my list that I want to get done?

Is there anything that will take little time or effort to accomplish?

Is there anything that will involve several steps to get accomplished?

What are the high, medium, and low priority items?

Are there any thematic categories that require my attention? Do yo

need to reach a health goal? Do you need to make your finances a number one on your list? 

The key is to determine what is most important to you. Let me give you an example of what I have done to prioritize and categorize my lists of goals and dreams. 

Step One: I made a list of 50 goals and dreams. They run the gamut from lofty dreams to simple goals.

Step Two: My first method of organizing was along thematic lines: spiritual, health & beauty, financial, career, artistic endeavors, and home decorating.

Step Three: Once I had my themes, I prioritized my themes. I felt the spiritual goals, praying everyday and reading at least a chapter in the Bible a day would have a positive effect on achieving the other items on my list. So not only is that category a priority, it does not take a lot of effort or time to accomplish, and I personally believe it is something I need to do daily.

Step Four: I then addressed each thematic category and the items in the category one by one.  Within each category what is most important to me, what needs to be done, what should be done, and what I want to get done. Put it another way, what is a high, medium, and low priority?

Step Five: Once I look at the items priority level, I then look at time constraints. Is there anything here that I can accomplish in the next week, month, three months? Is there anything I can do to get my encouragement up? What will have to be broken down into further little baby bite sized pieces?

Tomorrow we will talk about the baby bite-sized pieces. Today prioritize the items. Do not evaluate the merit or worth of your goals. This is not that kind of prioritizing!  The goal here is to make your list manageable so that we can go from Dreaming to Planning  and eventually to Doing.
  
To Read 31 Days of Dream. Plan. Do. from the beginning click here.