What you prioritize is revealed in how you spend your time. As we discussed in the last article, if you’re caught in a cycle of problem solving, then you will be prioritizing what feels the most urgent in the moment, not necessarily your goals and values. As Servant Leaders, we want to be consistent people for whom what we do is in alignment with what we say. And this can start by checking our priorities.
Making the List
When you make a to-do list for your day, what questions guide this process? Do you look at deadlines that are coming up? Or which task will take the most time? These are important practical factors to consider. But you do yourself a disservice if you do not also take into account your values and long-term goals.
It’s easy to forget about our long-term goals when we’re not taking small steps towards them every day. They can feel far off and like we have so much time for them, and so therefore they never make it to the top of the to-do list. But, if you actually want to achieve the goal, you can’t keep pushing it off forever. It needs to become a priority at some point in order for you to make the progress you say you want to make.
The Creative Process
In the last article, we talked about how the most productive form of There-Here-Path implementation is called the Creative Process. That is because it will take some creativity to figure out how to prioritize your values when you have other tasks pulling at your time. It also might involve re-thinking your current list of priorities to determine projects that might be able to be put on the back burner to make room for ones that align with your Transcendent There.
Your time is precious, and how you spend it reflects what your values are. If you say you value one thing, but then you spend your time prioritizing another, that works against your Referent Power. Become a more consistent Servant Leader by allocating your time to work towards your long-term goals that serve your Transcendent There.
Gracie McBride is the Content and Systems Development Coordinator at The Crossroad.
