Priorities

Last week, I rearranged my priorities using a convenient little chart I learned in one of CollegePlus's Signature Leadership Courses. It looks a little something like this:

As you can see, the two planes represent urgency and importance of priorities and tasks. There are things that are both urgent and important; urgent but not important, important but not urgent, and neither urgent nor important. Defining these categories really helped me see where to focus my energy.

Things like school and work made my "urgent and important" list. Things like family and talking on the phone with Jake made my "important but not urgent" category. And then there were some things like meeting Inksanity goals, NaNoWriMo, and socializing that were in the "less important" categories. Not that these last few items are bad things- in fact some of them have held greater importance for me in the past. But for right now, I need to narrow down my focus so I don't go crazy.

For those those things in the "urgent but not important" list (typically pressing matters that demand your attention even if they are not important to you personally), Dr. Meyers recommended setting a definite time limit for those tasks. Don't strive for the best blog post you can write; instead strive for the best post you can write in twenty minutes. See the difference? By setting a time limit, you can accomplish those tasks without worrying about the finer details.

I've been thinking about the Leadership Courses a lot lately. One girl from the Capstone event texted me the other day to say hello and catch up. We had a great conversation about what God has been doing in our lives since the three day event in Estes Park. It was refreshing to informally review the course concepts with one of my peers. I realized that I could be practicing the course concepts a lot more than I have been, especially with the unique opportunity I have to mentor the freshmen girls at CCC. Honestly, good leadership--servant leadership-- is something that must be practiced before it comes easily and it is something I could be actively practicing more. I've been meaning to reread Cultivate, one of the books we read for the course, for quite some time now. Maybe I just need to dust it off my shelf and dive in!