SETTING PRIORITIES

 “If a goal is meaningfully, directly, and continually visible, your chances of achieving it increase.” Charles R. Hobbs.

A priority is a valued goal that normally requires one to work on it before others. It has two most important realms: urgency and vitality.

Urgency motivates most people to move a project or an event. Urgency means "getting into doing something immediately." It does not matter whether the project is vital or trivial, if it is urgent, it gets done. Whether essential or trivial, if it has no urgency, the tendency is to put it off, to wait. Most teachers and school managers have a lot of trivial urgent things to do. Urgency is the biggest enemy of time management in a school. You enter a school and everyone is rushing to do something which according to them is urgent and end up missing the most vital things. Urgency is in most cases attached to trivial things.

The dictionary defines vital as something of great necessity and essential.

Check your routine and evaluate your schedule. You will be shocked you spend much time on things that are urgent and actually you don’t find much issue with it. Urgency can be your greatest achieving power. Have you ever asked yourself whether the things you do could have waited or not that vital? Urgency is not the only important attitude to make a project move but equally important is the vitality of it. Have you ever noticed that at the end of the eight working hours, you are tired but can’t see the result of your work?   

Many of us confuse vital events with urgent events and so make a mistake in prioritizing our work. We think that whatever puts us under pressure is actually urgent. Let us categorize these events as;

Event Category	Description
A	Very vital and very urgent
B	Very vital and not very urgent
C	Not very vital but very urgent
D	Not very vital and not very urgent

 

Events in category A require that one put everything aside and work on them. Such events need immediate action. For example, one may be required to present a report on a project done before to the Managing Director and he/she needs accountability as soon as it is available. In this case, this report becomes urgent and it is very important therefore, working on it immediately is the wisest thing to do.

Events in Category B are vital but not urgent. This actually points to the reasons for deadlines in projects. This is because the very is very vital but can wait. For example, you may want to do a master’s degree in a particular discipline because your company has asked that one should be having it in five years in future. In Uganda, a normal Masters degree takes two years and one has five years to attain it. In this case, the Masters degree is very vital but not urgent so one can wait and enroll after next year. It does not need immediate action.

Events in category C are not very vital but often urgent. These events are normally created by our own worlds. For example, one may be at work and receive a call from a friend inviting him/her for a bottle of beer yet it is time for work. About work, beer is not vital if not necessary and can wait. But one person may opt to go for a beer because he/she deems it urgent. Such events should always be done when one has no other category A event at hand.

Events in category D are the most useless ones. Like engaging oneself in fantasy quarrels with workmates or even at home. A quarrel is not vital and actually can be ignored. One can live without it and life still remains awesome. Why would one engage in a quarrel at work? Events that don’t have any productive results and are not urgent should be neglected.

If you desire to control an anticipated event for example furthering your studies, it is not difficult to identify that event’s priority level, list it with the immediate goals of your life, and designate time for it. If you associate a strong urgency with it, it will happen at an appropriate time. You don’t need to panic.

When one fails to understand the degree of urgency and vitality of an event, one ends up confused and focusing on trivial things. It’s good to categorize your events and organize them in a manner that you can handle them efficiently. “If a goal is meaningfully, directly, and continually visible, your chances of achieving it increase.” Charles R. Hobbs.