How to Decide What’s Important Right Now

Productivity

Jun 18

Written By Jessica Massey

Keep reading this post to learn:

⋒ What it means and looks like to identify and honor the season you are in

⋒ 5 steps to decide what is most important right now

⋒ More details about the Quarter 3 BFF Membership enrollment coming up July 1st!

What does it mean to honor your season?

To me, honoring your season means aligning your priorities and routines with what’s happening in your life. Many people forget that routines and priorities are not “set ‘em and forget ‘em” things.

You have to audit and edit them from time to time to make sure that they are still supporting your season of life. So that means that when your life changes – whether planned or unplanned – you’ve got to update your priorities and routines to match.

When you find out you’re pregnant, what’s important right now is going to change.

When you give birth, what’s important right now is going to change.

When you start a new job, what’s important right now is going to change.

When you decide to go to grad school, what’s important right now is going to change.

When you get married, what’s important right now is going to change.

That’s the easy part, right? Realizing that life is different. But what can be more challenging is re-configuring your priorities and knowing what’s important when things change.

That’s what we’re gonna talk about today – how to do that! How to decide what’s important right now.

I broke it down into 5 steps to make it easy to follow along and implement so let’s dive in!

5 Steps to Decide What’s Most Important Right Now

01: Establish and/or revisit your values.

This is step 1 for a reason – literally every single decision that I make is based on my values.

Values: a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life. They help determine your priorities. Your personal values are a central part of who you are – and who you want to be.

If you’ve already spent time creating your values, this would be a good time to revisit them to remind yourself what matters to you most in the gran scheme of life.

If you’ve never spent time creating your values, this would be a good time to write a few value statements to help guide your decision-making in life.

I like to think about my main roles in life, and I write a value statement that goes along with each role. So my 3 value statements are:

⋒ I live with intention and operate in my purpose of being like Christ every day.

⋒ I am a calm and present wife and mom cultivating a peaceful home.

⋒ I am the confident CEO of Hustle Sanely®, an impactful business that helps women show up for their lives intentionally and that makes an abundant income for my family.

I have these written in my journal and I read them every single morning. When I’m trying to cut through my to-do list and figure out what is the most important, I make sure that anything I choose aligns with my values.

02: Define your season.

In order for you to decide what’s important right now, you have to start by naming your season.

To do this, I’ve got a few questions for you to work through:

~ What is currently going on in your life?
~ What roles, responsibilities, and goals are pertinent in your life right now?
~ List 1-3 things that are taking up most of your time and energy in this season.
~ How long do you think you’ll be in this season?
~ Rate your capacity for relational/social activity, work activity, and any other category that is relevant to your life.
The ratings I like to use are: no energy to spare, some energy to spare, abundant energy to spare

When you get clear on what season you’re in, it makes figuring out what’s important right now a whole lot easier.

03: Decide what your top 3 life priorities are for this season.

I think the best way to do this is by using categories or else things just feel way too big and that’s overwhelming, which is not the vibe around here. Here are the categories I use:

~ Personal Well-Being
Includes: mental/spiritual health, hobbies, self-care, etc.

~ Relationships
Includes: partner, family, friends, etc.

~ Physical Health
Includes: exercise, sleep, nutrition, etc.

~ Finances
Includes: budgeting, saving, giving, etc.

~ Vocation
Includes: career, education, life mission, etc.

~ Spaces
Includes: house, office, vehicle, etc.

So think about each of these areas of your life and decide which 3 need your best attention right now, based on what’s going on in your life. Or another way to help decide is to rate each category and whichever 3 get the lowest rating are probably in need of some attention.

In my current season, I’m raising a toddler and running a business. Notice I said running a business, not trying to grow or scale a business. My top 3 priorities are:

Personal well-being

Relationships
Physical health

I want these 3 categories to get my best time and energy because my focus as a mom to a toddler who is also the primary financial provider of the family is to make sure that I have the energy to show up for my daughter and do my job well. To show up for these things well, I need to be healthy physically and mentally, hence why personal well-being and physical health made my top 3 list. And then when I had Everly, I decided that being as present as possible for her before she started school was a top priority which is why relationships is my third one.

This isn’t to say that the other categories don’t matter or that I’m not doing things to show up for them, it just means that they aren't the most important right now. So like in my season, I’m not trying to renovate our kitchen or launch a new business.

If I have energy to spare, I can pour into these other life areas, but otherwise, I’m okay with operating in maintenance mode for them rather than in focus mode for them.

04: Create sustainable habits for each priority.

Now that you have picked the 3 areas of your life that you want to prioritize in this season, it’s time for you to create sustainable habits for each one. Emphasis on the word sustainable.

When you are in a place where you feel burned out or stretched really thin, think about how you can show up. What are some things you can do on your worst days that help you show up for your priorities?

Start there and build on top of that.

I had a habits expert, Monica, on the show a few months back and we talked about how so often, we create habits with the “best day” version of us in mind and that’s actually backward from what we should be doing.

Create habits that you can do on those days that you’re just trying to survive and then on the “best day” version of you days, add more!

Here’s the thing – most of us thrive with routine and structure (even if you think you don’t, I bet you do to some extent). – which means that our brains like knowing exactly what we need to do.

I can say that my well-being, physical health, and relationships (specifically family relationships) are the 3 most important things right now but if I don’t explicitly state how I’m going to show up for those things, I am not going to show up for them well. I know that about myself. I need some sort of gameplan to help hold me accountable and that is where habits come in.

Habits aren’t a pass or fail thing...habits are simply tools that help hold us accountable to show up for what is important to us.

Here are some examples of habits that I have in place for my current season’s priorities:

Well-being:
+ Journaling every morning and evening (gratitude practice is part of this)
+ Grounding for 5 minutes a day

Physical health:
+ Move for 30 minutes every day
+ Set myself up to get at least 7 hours of sleep per day
+ Drink 100 oz of water a day

Relationships:
+ Spend 30 intentional phone-free minutes a day with Everly
+ Do question of the day with Adam at the end of every day

These are my baseline habits for these categories. Some days I do more, which is awesome! But even on my hard days, I’m able to do these habits.

05: Call out stressors and brainstorm solutions for them.

Stressors are roadblocks or things that could potentially keep you from showing up for your habits that point back to this season’s priorities.

We can’t always control all stressors in our lives, but being aware of them helps us to take ownership of what we can.

We tend to hold onto and bury things that are stressing us out because that can feel easier or safer than taking them head-on. But holding and burying blocks growth. Part of defining what your priorities are is getting rid of things taking up space that are hindering you from living out your vision.

I know y’all love a concrete example so here are a few:

😅 STRESSOR: Your toddler waking up during your morning routine when one of your habits this season is to journal and read your bible every morning

💡 SOLUTION: You listen to an audio version of the Bible and do you 5 minutes of journaling while your toddler eats a snack.

😅 STRESSOR: Procrastinating when you sit down to work on your business in the evenings when one of your habits this season is to dedicate 10 hours a week to building your business.

💡 SOLUTION: You realize you are more focused in the mornings so you flip your schedule and work on your business in the mornings and do you workout in the evenings.

Life is always going to be lifing – it’s probably always going to feel like you are being pulled in 14 different directions at once because that’s just the normal pace in our hurry-centric society. As someone who is seeking to live a peacefully predictive life, it’s your responsibility to choose to do things differently. And honestly, it might feel weird at first. Because when you’re used to spreading yourself thin and running hard and fast toward everything all the time, saying no, setting boundaries, and reeling your time and energy back in to focus it on fewer things feels uncomfy! We have to be gracious with ourselves as we unlearn the way of a fast-paced life and cultivate new rhythms that support a peacefully productive life.

You don’t have to live your life like anyone else. You get to decide what’s important to you and how you’re gonna show up for those things.

You’re not dropping the ball in other areas – you’re just focusing your best attention on what deserves it in this season of your life.

Forreal, if you vibed with this blog post, you will love what we’ve got going on in the BFF Membership during quarter 3! I created an entire workbook that puts all of this into action steps and we’ll be hosting coaching calls to help you work through everything… it’s such a perfect topic to hit before the holidays roll around in Q4!