The Best Question you can Ask Yourself?

Personally and professionally we live in a sea of goals, targets, priorities, stakeholders, plans, execution strategies, demands, questions, conflicts, debates, choices.

We do our best to give each of these our time, attention and energy in the correct proportion. We pay great attention to our time management. We prioritise and re-prioritise as we go.

We identify what we need to do and work out how we are going to achieve it.

Most of the time, this works. We keep in sight what we set out to do.

Sometimes though, we lose sight of our original sense of direction.

That’s where the Question comes in.

If you find yourself wondering how you got so far into a problematic project, got involved in something you hadn’t planned on doing or are struggling with which choice to make out of many options - ask yourself:

What’s important about this?

If you can identify what is important, great.

If you cannot identify what is important, great.

Either way the answer to that question gives you the clarity you need to make good decisions.

If you can identify why the thing is important, prioritising it becomes easier because you will be clearer on its purpose. It will confirm the alignment of activity and purpose.

If you can’t easily identify what is important about it, that knowledge will suggest options and opportunities for you. It may be that there are other things, more important things, that are a better use of your time and energy. When we admit that something is unimportant or less important than other things, we can modify its status. We can stop or postpone an activity or decide to reduce our time and attention to it.

Clarity about what is important is a great first step to finding clarity and motivation about what you spend your time and attention on.