How to Prioritize Your Life

Learning how to prioritize your life is key to living a happier life.

When you learn the art of how to prioritize when everything is important and urgent your life will drastically change.

You will be able to accomplish the goals and dreams that are important to you instead of constantly putting your needs and wants last, by default.

At times, life can be extremely overwhelming and chaos can throw you way off course from even the simpliest goals.

I enjoy making family and friends happy. I love helping and supporting them.

But I realized that because I wasn’t being intentional with prioritizing my other needs as well, my life became consumed with helping others.

It honestly sucked the joy out of my life for a while because only one set of needs were being prioritized and met and they weren’t mine. 

Today, I’m sharing the best tips that helped me prioritize my life which led to a happier life. Let me help you learn to organize and prioritize your life.

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How To Decide Your Priorities

To prioritize your life, the first step is to align your lifestyle with your the most important goals and activites in your lfie.

This is key to increasing productivity in all aspects of your life, as it will help you to create a sensible, practical, and rewarding “to-do list”. 

Setting priorities in life is also necessary when it comes to marriage and relationships with your loved ones.

Good examples are disagreements caused because spouses don’t share priorities with one another. And I don’t mean that you don’t have the same priorities – It’s certainly okay to have different priorities but sharing your priorities with each other is beneficial.

The thing is that life isn’t predictable! Of course, there are going to be days where nothing goes according to plan and nothing on your to-do list gets completed or even touched.

Especially in these times, it’s important to accept that some priorities will change along the way, sometimes even day-to-day.

The great news is that once you have a solid system in place to set priorities as a mom, you’re good to go. 

The most significant benefit of learnning how to set your priorities in life to be in line with your goals is that you will be able to give more quality attention to the things that matter the most.  

How To Prioritize People In Your Life

What has been working for me is setting my goals first and then aligning my priorities.

While I have personal dreams and aspirations, making my family happy means the most to me. It’s what keeps me going and brings me the most joy. So, they’re my number one priority – always. 

While they are always my main priority, they are not my sole priority.

My personal dreams and goals are a very close second and now that I’ve been prioritizing them, it is never an issue to ensure that I have a balance with those sets of priorities. 

In fact, they typically go hand in hand – once everyone’s happy, I get the cooperation and support that I need to get my stuff done. So it’s definitely a win-win. 

For example, if my husband and I need to reconnect, I drop my chore list and I spend more time with him. If my kids need a little more snuggle time (sometimes all day on Sunday) that becomes my main priority. Sometimes, chores suffer and work gets pushed back a bit but my weekly schedule is adjusted and I get support to catch up on what lagged. 

The Best Way To Organize and Prioritize Your Life

The #1 and the easiest way to set priorities as a mom and prioritize your mom to do lists and day to day tasks is by using the Eisenhower’s matrix.

It “helps you decide on and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance, sorting out less urgent and important tasks which you should either delegate or not do at all.”

The first step is to identify what is important. Next decide on the order. To do this, ask yourself these questions:

1. What is important?

Start by writing down everything that comes to mind, in no particular order. 

2. How can I categorize my needs and wants?

Then, create categories and start placing everything. Since I’m working on prioritizing my needs along with my immediate family’s, I use the following:

ME: Putting other people first is second nature to being a mom. But it also allows us to get comfortable with pushing our needs so far that we lose sight of it. So, for five minutes I only think of myself – my health, my dreams & goals.

Hubby & kids: happiness and needs. Marriage is a constant work in progress. So we’re always mindful to prioritize it and never take it for granted. 

Others: friends, appointments, obligations. 

3. What is urgent 

Then pinpoint the order of urgency for each. Ask yourself these:

What makes me the happiest?

What must be completed to ensure I’m happy? And what is currently standing in my way?

An example for me is wanting to become fit but using the excuse that I have no time. But what’s truly standing in my way? When I figure that out, shifting less important and less urgent things makes prioritizing easier. 

Always ask yourself – What am I prioritizing to make others happy and is it aligned with my goals? Should I be saying no to some of these and focus on my needs and wants?

How To Prioritize Your Life Tasks

So, now that we have our technique, how do we put this together to prioritize as a busy mom? 

Basically, you’re going to categorize your tasks based on importance and urgency (using the guidelines outlined above).

1. Important & Urgent – do these now

These are the tasks that are going to add the most value to your life. They are aligned with your goals and dreams and need attention first.

2. Important & Not urgent – schedule these. 

These are tasks that add value to your life but are less time-sensitive and be scheduled. Quite a few tasks typically fall in this category and are easier to manage with the use of a calendar and reminders.  

3. Not Important & urgent – delegate or outsource these. 

While these tasks are deemed urgent to others, they’re less urgent and important to you. They’re less aligned with your goals and take up unnecessary time and effort. They add little to no value to your life but nonetheless, they need to be completed. An example of this is a request from someone other than your immediate family.

4. Not important & Not urgent – do later or not at all

These are activities that are time wasters.

These are the usual suspects when we claim to have “no time” to get important things done – like quality time with loved ones or exercising.

Activities like mindlessly scrolling through social media or binge-watching tv every day, all-day and gaming fall into this category. 

Once we have our priorities set, creating our to-do lists, planning and scheduling becomes much easier and more pragmatic.

Final Thoughts On How To Prioritize Life

Now that you know how to prioritize your life, it’s time to put it into action and get the most important things done first!

Remember, being busy doesn’t prevent you from achieving your dreams and goals

• Not prioritizing effectively as a mom prevents you

• Placing importance on things that aren’t that important to you prevent you. 

• Excuses prevent you. 

But with a great effective and efficient technique to prioritize as a mom, you can enjoy life even more.

What about you? How do you prioritize? And do you make it a habit of prioritizing your needs? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below with your experiences, questions, and suggestions. 

Also, check out these posts to help you on your self-development journey:

• 99 Self Reflection Questions To Find Yourself
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• 5 Daily Self Care Habits
• 8 Simple Things To Do On Sunday For A Productive Week
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• Over 100 Short Positive Affirmations