🔭 30-Day Productivity Challenge - Day 4 - Prioritisation
👋 Hey Friends,
Welcome back to the 30-Day Productivity Challenge by the famous YouTuber, former doctor and now writer Ali Abdaal.
In the last couple of days, we have committed ourselves to this challenge and have made a broad overview of what we want our future to look like. We have learned that it is important to set a psychological mark for where you want to be in the future because a ship without a destination will never reach its goal.
I have personally struggled with this a little since I am in a position of great dependency as a high schooler, but this also made me realise that I am controlling my life and that only I can dedicate myself to working on my future.
But when setting goals it is significant to not set too many goals but rather prioritize and here is how and why.
🏃Goal Prioritisation
🧐 Why even prioritise?
Before we start, it is worth thinking about why prioritisation is so significant. The reason for the great importance of this behaviour in your life can be simply seen within one quote from the best-selling book “The Courage to be Disliked” by Fumitake Koga & Ichiro Kishimi:
Do Not Live to Satisfy the Expectations of Others.
This seems a bit contradictory, but let’s break it down. What the quote says is that we are not permitted to live to do what’s best for others. This implies that you need to focus and hence prioritise what is important to you. If you walk to a party and your goal is that everyone thinks of you greatly, you have to change yourself because not everyone will understand you.
This means you change because of the goal to satisfy the needs of others.
The goal, however, is not to be liked by everyone, but rather to be liked by those who understand you and your values. This implies that you need to accept being disliked by other people.
Through prioritising what’s best for you, you will learn how to say no, but doing so will bring you closer to the things that you want to accomplish.
🤔 How can we prioritise?
As always, I will portray this with myself and my goals and those I would like to prioritise. What Ali recommends us to do is to use a technique by the famous multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett. It is the so-called “2 List Method” and you guessed it, it consists of creating two lists.
We do this the following way. First, we start by writing down our 25 most important goals. I am going to focus on goals that I want to accomplish this year. But I will still have my life vision in mind from yesterday 👉 read here.
| Career/ School | Health | Learning | Relationships | Personal Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continue on current school statistics | Run a half-marathon | Read 40 books | Improve connection to elder family members | Become a better teacher through teaching either in class or on social media |
| Write 1,000 words a day | Mediate at least once a week | Read Feynman I | Improve connection to my friends | Connect with your inner self by learning how to find clearance in your thoughts |
| Hit 200k Instagram followers | Run a sub 20 min 5k | Read relationship books | Go on at least two date nights a month | Reflect monthly on life |
| Make 5,000 Euro either through jobbing or writing | Eat nutritious meals for 5 out of 7 days a week | Learn how to make great YouTube videos | Be a better son and brother | |
| Write an eBook | Keep a journal everyday |
What have I done now? I have created a list with 21 goals that I have categorised under Career/ School, Health, Learning, Relationships and Personal Growth. There are three major things we can see from my list:
- 🏔️ There are far too many goals to complete in one year.
- 🙈 They miss clearance and countable progress.
- ❌ Again, just: Excessively many.
What can we take from this? That is basic, and it is that we need to prioritise. We need to find the five goals that are the most significant to us. I have already marked mine. From there, we get the following new list:
| 2024 Prioritised Goals |
|---|
| ✏️ Write 1,000 words a day |
| 🏃Run a half-marathon |
| 📕Read 40 books |
| 👨👩👦 Improve connection to elder family members |
| ❤️ Go on at least two date nights a month |
What I have now are the 5 top goals that I want to accomplish this year because I have prioritized them. The only thing that is left is to completely forget about all the other 16 goals that I have set.
The reason can be again seen in the earlier quote. We have now prioritised, but presently it is our task to create our lives around these 5 goals to satisfy our needs and not the needs of other people.
These other 16 goals are interesting to me, but they will get me sidetracked from my 5 main missions for 2024.
So, write a goal list, take out the five most important and forget about the rest.
Only in this way, can you effectively shape your life in the way you want.
See you tomorrow. 👋
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Thanks again and I'll see you soon.
Victor (@observethecosmos)
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