What Gets Prioritized Gets Done 

As I was thinking this past Sunday morning about how to conquer the various to-dos of the day, I was presented with a myriad of items to accomplish. 

• Spend quality time with my family (that’s always on the list*), 
• Get in an easy workout, 
• Fix a leaky sprinkler system pressure relief valve, 
• Do my laundry from the week, 
• Work on the basement renovation, 
• Sow some garden seeds,
• Etc., etc., etc.

So I pursued this as I would any other list of to-do items at work (or in life, generally). I tackled the most important items first to ensure they got done. 

A Low-Key Sunday

Spending quality time with my family (especially while enjoying some fancy Stumptown coffee, as I did yesterday morning) almost always tops my list unless there’s an emergency. I started with that. I chatted with my awesome wife while she enjoyed her tea and tried her best to read. Then, so she could get showered and dressed for the day, I hung out with my Little Man, got him dressed and rough-housed on one of the beds for a little while.

After that, my wife took Little Man to the park to play, and I focused on my most imminent concern for the day: fixing the leaking pressure relief valve for our sprinkler system. It’s located right next to the side of our house, so in addition to being super wasteful of water, it also presented the possibility of saturating the ground that abuts the house. Over time, this could cause water seepage into our basement, which leads to mold problems, among other issues.

Mold in your house is bad.

I was lucky that this ended up being a pretty quick fix of just opening up the valve and cleaning out the various O-rings and other internal components. When reassembled, it was leak-free. Cha-ching! Saved us a $90 visit from the irrigation company!

That enabled me to get on to my next activity, which was getting in a light workout. Our whole household (myself included) have been sick with some sinus issues over the last week or two. I’ve been resting up during that time as a result, mostly by not working out and sleeping more. Getting back into the swing of things without overdoing it has been up there on my to-do list for once I felt well enough… Welp, this was the day! After all, I fully intend on keeping my physical capabilities alive.

The Key Takeaways

So why did I regurgitate my list of to-dos for a low-key Sunday? It’s to illustrate a few things that I wish I had grasped sooner in life:

1. What gets prioritized gets done. Did I sow any seeds in the garden? I did not. It simply wasn’t prioritized in my mind, so it fell by the wayside. There will be other days. After it’s all said and done, if I neglect to get something done, the onus is on me that it didn’t get done. Instead of “Sorry, I wasn’t able to do it,” it’s “I didn’t make it a priority” or “I decided to focus my time on more urgent/important things.”
2. Speaking of urgent things… As with triage,** tackle urgent things first. I was concerned that the leaky pressure relief valve on the sprinkler was urgent, so I made that the first thing I got done productivity-wise. My laundry, on the other hand, was not life-threatening—it just needed to be done eventually.

Pretty decent takeaway from a pretty good day.

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*I keep a Note file on my phone for a long-running to-do list. Number 1 on the list is always “Be a great dad.” I never check it off, and it always helps keep the other items in perspective.

**Triage: the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties:

• Immediate category: These casualties require immediate life-saving treatment.
• Urgent category: These casualties require significant intervention as soon as possible.
• Delayed category: These patients will require medical intervention, but not with any urgency.
• Expectant category: Expectant patients are those whose injuries are so severe that attempting to save them would divert precious resources from other casualties with a greater chance of survival, with no significant chance of a successful outcome. (Greaves, Ian and Paul Hunt, Responding to Terrorism, A Medical Handbook. 2010)