Picture yourself a year from now

Take the '8760 hours perspective' to figure out your priorities

The central tenet of time management is that we should focus on our priorities. But sometimes it’s a little less obvious what our priorities should be. Work can have a great many things going on, and saying “my family is my priority” doesn’t provide concrete guidance on how to spend, say, a Saturday afternoon.

So here’s one of my favorite ways for thinking about this question and figuring out specific priorities. You can picture yourself a year from now, both professionally and personally, and reflect on what you’d like to say has happened in your life.

For instance, on the work front, you could picture yourself at a meeting with your manager a year from now. The two of you are raising a toast to how amazing the past year has been. If that were to be the case, what 3-5 things would you be celebrating?

Real achievements

When we think about this question, we see quickly that the answer is probably not going to be something like “responding in 30 seconds to all my emails.” It’s going to be something like “saved the company $X on that last bid” or “landed the new ABC company contract” or “hired and trained a team that is now winning company awards.” There is much to be said for solid habits and routines, but the idea is that they are moving towards something important. When you have an idea of what you would like these accomplishments to be, you can make daily decisions with your time that direct you toward these goals.

(No manager? You can picture doing your own review. Or maybe what you’d really like to be celebrating a year from now is that you’re in a new role or you’re out of the workforce. This is good to know too, because it will inform the steps you take to get there!)

You can do this in your personal life as well. May and June are often celebratory times when we see people we haven’t seen in a while. You might picture yourself getting together for beers with an old friend a year from now. He says he’s never seen you so happy. You explain that you’re glowing because of X, Y, and Z. What are those things?

Informing the schedule

Again, with this question, you can imagine that it’s not going to be how much Netflix you’ve managed to watch (though perhaps consciously watching through a favorite series with your spouse could make the list). It’s going to be something like having taken an awesome family vacation, or that you finally signed up for that pottery class you’ve been meaning to take, or that you and another friend started running together twice a week. If you know you’d like to be talking about these things in a year, then these goals can inform daily schedule choices.

In general, our top priorities for the year are going to be things we reflect back on as being meaningful, enjoyable, and important. You might list 3-5 things in the professional category, and 3-5 things in the personal category — and then put this list somewhere accessible. The goal is to look at this list when making your schedule. Maybe work is busy, but if running with a friend twice a week is going to be one of the year’s highlights, then maybe you can move things around and still make it work. If taking a great vacation is going to be a highlight, then maybe you move some funds to that category from another one. And if you are pretty sure landing that big contract will make the list, then you can budget time each week for figuring out how to get there. That will be a good use of time — because you know you’re making space for your priorities.

Want to read more about what I call the “8760 hours perspective”? Check out my new book Big Time, available now through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and other retailers.