What are your Priorities? A simple exercise to help reflect on your life
Posted: under Productive Behaviours to Spark and Enhance Creativity.
Tags: Coaching, Creativity, Practical Methodology, Productivity, Series: Priorities Comments (0)
Are you stuck in a pattern where you wake-up and decide that today’s going to be the day that you’re going to paint, but then find yourself getting ready for bed and aren’t sure where the day went? Do you have crafting supplies taking over your living room, but haven’t touched them in months? Do your works-in-progress leave you feeling depressed because they’re languishing and you can’t even remember what the story is about anymore?
Are your creative projects a priority for you?
With work, friends and family demands, it can be difficult to carve out time to make creative projects a priority. But it’s not enough to just say that you want your creativity to be a priority, your day to day life needs to reflect that it’s actually a priority.
Here’s an exercise that I’ve found helpful when I need to tweak my daily activities or if I need to determine what’s eating up my time.
Step 1
Write down what you would like your priorities to be or what you think they are. Include things like your family, pets, household chores, work, volunteering, etc., but don’t forget to include your creative projects.
Step 2
Next to each item from step 1, list 2-4 actions that reinforce these as a priority.
For example, one of the items on my list are my two dogs, Chloe and Basil. Next to them, I list things like feeding them and taking them out for daily walks.
Step 3
Write down your typical daily activities, as they occur. Be honest with yourself, and include things like eating, sleeping, work, tv, video games, reading blogs and newspapers, meeting friends for coffee, going to the bar, etc. This list should reflect not just your best days, but your least productive days as well.
What does this list tell you about what your priorities really are? Are they where you expected them to be? Were you surprised by anything on the lists?
Over the next few weeks I’ll explore different options for aligning your life with your goals, including techniques for carving out more time for your creative projects and looking at procrastination.
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Tags: Coaching, Creativity, Practical Methodology, Productivity, Series: Priorities