Don't Know Your Priorities? Try These Clarifying Questions
You can figure out what takes top trump.
Have you ever had trouble with what you think should be a simple decision? What to wear, what to have for dinner, whether or not to buy a book? (Let’s be honest. Around here, we always buy the book!)
There are a few reasons that simple decisions can overwhelm us, including but not limited to: our energy levels being low, other people’s advice being too loud in our own heads, uncertainty about how to even make a good decision in the first place, and what actually matters to us.
Today, I want to focus on that last one: sometimes we don’t know what actually matters to us.
We aren’t sure if what other people are saying matters, actually matters; or if what mattered to us last year still matters now; or if we’re just too tired to have anything besides sleep matter.
What Priorities Do for Decision-Making
Knowing what matters means having clear priorities, and clear priorities make decisions much easier. But what if you don’t know what your priorities are? Then, even the smallest decision becomes unwieldy.
Should I wear this shirt? I care about looking put together, but it’s not that comfortable, so I’ll be slightly itchy all day. But if I wear the comfortable one, I might look too casual. Why don’t I have any good clothes? I wish I could just wear pyjamas all day…
Should I make soup or have frozen pizza for dinner? The soup is so much healthier. We have veg that need using up. But I am so tired. I know pizza is bad for me, and I know it puts our grocery bill up, but the thought of chopping and cooking and cleaning up is totally exhausting…
Should I buy this book? I know we don’t have any room left on the shelves, but I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time. But it’s expensive. But I want to support this author, who isn’t getting paid much, anyway…
Not having clear priorities means that with each tiny decision, we have to weigh out all the pros and cons, all the things we feel ought to matter, and indeed, may actually matter, but we just aren’t sure. It’s exhausting.
Imagine if you knew that your priority with clothing, your absolute bottom line, was comfort. You would choose the comfortable shirt, and you might decide you need to shop for a smarter-looking-but-still-comfortable top at a later date.
Imagine if you knew that your priority of the day was rest. You’d choose pizza, no guilt. You wouldn’t be worried about secondary things like healthy eating or even the family budget, because you would have already decided that those don’t trump rest.
If you knew that your priority for the year around book-buying is to keep your shelves limited, that may entail a different course of action than if your priority for the year is to support authors you love.
In many ways, a priority is a pre-made decision. We have decided what matters most, and everything else gets in line behind it.
Confusion Around Priorities
But sometimes it’s hard to know what our priorities are, because we value several different things that might be in conflict. It matters to us that we look put-together. It matters that we’re comfortable. It matters that we eat healthy and stick to a budget and rest. It matters that we support authors and also keep our house from collapsing under the weight of too many books. It all matters! What then?
First, it’s important to remember that most priorities are seasonal, not permanent. The decision about what matters most doesn’t have to be once-and-for-all. (In fact, some priorities are weekly or even daily: some days require rest to take priority; other days need us to put something else at the top of our list.)
Then, it’s a good idea to set aside the voices of others who have a lot to tell us about what we think should be most important. Just hush all the noise for a bit, look at your own life and the people in it, and figure out what’s needed most - not in some ideal world that doesn’t exist, but in your real, day-to-day, actual life.
Finally, you can ask yourself some clarifying questions.
Questions to Help You Clarify Your Priorities
Start with: what is serving what? Or, what enables what?
The actions you take serve something else. Choosing frozen pizza serves your ability to be present to your people by enabling you to rest.
On the other hand, It doesn’t serve your budget.
But if we take another step back, we can ask, what does the budget serve? Presumably, it serves your life, not the other way around. You budget exists to enable you to live in a way that you consider good or peaceful. So everything ultimately serves the goal of living well in this season.
If you know what living well looks like, you know your top priority. If you don’t? Now’s your chance to find out.
Ask yourself: what trumps what?
Does saving money trump being able to rest? If so, why? What does saving money enable you to do, and why does that thing trump rest in this season?
Sometimes saving money enables you to keep a roof over your head, and that has to trump rest. Other times, saving money enables you to be frugal just for the sake of being frugal. Does that trump rest?
This works for our other examples, too.
What purpose does wearing a particular shirt serve? Presumably, it enables you to go to work. So which shirt better enables you to get your job done at work?
What purpose does buying a book serve? It enables you to support a beloved author. Does supporting an author trump needing to find room on a bookshelf?
The key is to try to get clarity about your priorities outside of the daily, detailed, decision-making.
Think of the areas that often tend to find you in decision paralysis, whether it be food, clothing, budgeting, hobbies, or even interactions with others. Then, decide on some priorities for this particular season of life. You can start by asking yourself:
What serves what?
What enables what?
What trumps what?
Tell me: how do you decide on your own priorities? Have you ever been able to simplify decisions by getting clarity about what serves what?
Great post, Kerri! I would anticipate that this process of asking "What serves what?" etc. would also be helpful in identifying areas in which you're making choices based on habits or false assumptions instead of healthy priorities. For example, if you're looking at the pizza choice and you find yourself saying something like "health trumps rest because I shouldn't need to rest," you would have the opportunity to realize that you're a little mixed up about the moral reality that we all need rest and that's okay.