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I have a confession to make: For years, I was untruthful.

I was untruthful to myself and to others.

When I’d say “I don’t have time for that”, I thought I was speaking the truth.

But I wasn’t.

That statement wasn’t untrue because I lacked personal commitments. I’ve always been driven, and keep my calendar full!

My real problem is that I hadn’t taken the time to consider how I spent my time, and why I spent it that way.

Time is your most valuable resource. And once you’ve used it up, it’s gone.

At the end of your life, you’ll give just about anything to have a few more years of youth. Which is why spending your time wisely is such an important issue.

Your Time Is Your Priorities

When I told myself and others “I don’t have time for that”, what I should have said is “I’d like to, but that isn’t a priority for me right now.”

Or, a more unfortunate response: “That is a priority for me, but I feel committed to spending my time in other ways…”

Living your best life means spending your time in a way that accurately reflects your priorities.

But far too often, time isn’t spent wisely. It gets spent it on the priorities of other people. Or on commitments you let into your life without considering their implications.

Aligning your priorities with your behavior isn’t about maximizing productivity, or any other external metric.

It’s about maximizing your personal wellbeing.

When your behavior doesn’t align with your priorities, you feel unhappy. Angry. Stressed. Unfulfilled.

When your priorities align with how you spend your time, you feel great. Joyful. Present. Happy.

So…why do people act inconsistently with their values?

Why We Don’t Act With Our Priorities in Mind

There are number of culprits.

• Mental conditioning
  You’re used to doing what you’re used to doing. Even if your habits don’t bring you joy, they’re comfortable enough for you to continue on.
  e.g. Compulsively reaching for your phone and opening Instagram.
• Lack of awareness
  You don’t realize that you’re stuck in patterns that aren’t improving your life. Humans are great at staying reactive, and going with the flow.
  e.g. Spending the last 30 minutes before sleep looking at a screen. Then, wondering why you wake up feeling tired.
• Lack of initiative
  Even when you are aware that something needs to change, you fear the hypothetical implications of change. Losses loom larger than gains.
  Or you simply aren’t willing to persevere through the difficult process of creating change.
  e.g. Knowing you want to get in shape, but not taking steps to eat well and get active.
• Mismatched incentives
  You think that you’re chasing after something that matters. But in reality, you’re chasing after something that matters to someone else. Usually with an associated reward of some kind.
  e.g. Doing a job you don’t like but staying with it for the money. You think money is the important part. But it’s not. It never has been.
  This isn’t to say you don’t need money–everyone needs money to a certain extent. The point here is that there are always other ways for you to accomplish a given goal. In this case, to make money in a way that brings you joy and fulfillment. Free educational opportunities have never been more abundant. If you want to make a change and do something new, you can.
• Politeness
  You say yes to things you don’t really want to do in order to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.
  e.g. Friends invite you to an event that you don’t want to go to. But you say yes anyway.

Enough with the doom and gloom. Fortunately for all of us, there is a silver lining to this story.

Cultivating a Mindset of Abundance

Here’s an empowering fact to internalize: we’re all given the same amount of time as everyone else.

Everyone in the world has 24 hours each day to spend as they see fit.

It’s up to you to figure out what matters to you. And to spend your days doing those things.

In the big picture, we think about life in time periods. Years, decades, and relationships.

But you never actually live life on that time scale. Life happens in the moments of every day. Minute by minute.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
-Annie Dillard

So take the time to align your daily behavior with your priorities. There may be some discomfort in the near term, but you’ll thank yourself down the road.

Use the 20 Minute Life Checkup to Get Your Priorities in Order

This is a powerful exercise you can use to analyze the alignment of your behavior and your priorities. The images are just examples. Yours will likely include more data points.

You can do this exercise in a notebook or with sticky notes. Or, make it easier for yourself and download the free guide. Print them off, and you have everything ready to go.

And yes, you can do this in 20 minutes. But if it takes more time, don’t worry. It’s worth it!

1. Track how you spend your time during the week

You can do this as you go throughout the week, at the end of every day, or looking back on the week as a whole.

Write down the different ways you spend your time throughout the week. You can group things into categories for the initial pass through. But you may want to split up bigger categories into smaller components later on.

2. Organize your behavior by time spent

Take all of the activities, and reorder them from least time spent to most time spent.

In step 1, If you keep track of what you do as you go, make notes of how much time you spent doing each thing. You don’t need to be super precise. But keeping track of the time is helpful. Sometimes you’ll be surprised how much/how little time you spend on certain activities.

3. Add a secondary axis of priority

Map how you spend your time against how important those things are to you.

So, keeping the activities in their place on the X axis, move them up or down depending on how big of a priority they are to you.

4. Evaluate what needs to change

• Identify what you should spend less time on (start with the bottom right quadrant)
• Identify what you should spend more time on (start with the top left quadrant)

5. Make a plan to make changes

Of what you currently do:

• Doing less of what isn’t a priority
  Investigate why you spend time on those things now. There may be something worth preserving.
  For example, I spend more time than I should surfing the internet, and on social media. Surfing the internet helps me read and learn. Social media helps me connect with friends. But neither are the best way to go about achieving those goals. Reading books is a superior way to learn. And talking or texting 1:1 is a better way to connect with friends. I can make a “do this, not that” list with this knowledge in mind. When I catch myself falling into old habits, I’ll know what to do instead.

[Learn how to gracefully “break up” with existing commitments that no longer serve you in this article.]

• Doing more of what is a priority
  By spending less time on unimportant things, you should create space for important things. This area requires careful consideration. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking something is a priority. Be honest with yourself about what matters most right now. And set time on your schedule to do those things.
• Evaluating new opportunities
  When considering new ways to spend your time, ask yourself one question: Does this align with my priorities? Now that you have your worksheets filled out, use them for reference! That thinking will help you decide if doing something new is the right move.

6. Be mindful that values and priorities are dynamic and unique to you

• Your priorities are unique to you
  You are the only one who gets to decide what you believe. When you were a kid, your parents may have had control over that to some extent. But that doesn’t last forever. At the end of the day, nobody knows you like you know you.
• Your priorities are dynamic
  This isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of exercise. Priorities change over time as you enter different stages of life, and as unpredictable life events happen. Come back to your charts every 6-12 months and re-evaluate if your priorities have shifted.

7. Optimize your schedule (this is optional)

In a perfect world, all of your activities would be charted along a curve like this.

It’s not a linear scale, because there are tiers of importance in your life.

The curve would be different for all of us. But there would be one. So even within the top-right and bottom-left quadrants, there’s room for improvement. A few “zones” become most important.

The Examined Life is Worth Living

Inverting Socrates’ famous quote gives us a charge to take action.

It all starts with awareness. Examine your life to understand what matters to you.

Then, act accordingly.

When you live life by your priorities, everyone will know it. You’ll be putting your most authentic self into the world, spreading enthusiasm, joy, and positivity to others. We’ll all be better for it.

PS: Click here to download the worksheets to get started!

Based in Chicago, IL, Patrick Buggy is a coach and writer at MindfulAmbition.net, where he shares mindful strategies to help you live your best life. To receive his most popular articles, join the free Mindful Ambition weekly newsletter.