Pivot for Success

3Defining Your Priorities

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

—Matthew 6:21

TODAY MORE THAN ever, Defining Your Priorities is a critical step before you can emotionally, energetically, and strategically pivot toward the vision you have for your life. Defining Your Priorities determines where you will put your time, your resources, and your mental fortitude every day. Your priorities are what come before everything else. Prioritizing, of course, and the degree of it, will depend on what part of your life you are focusing on—work, family, relationships, health, spirituality—and where you are in life, whether you are a student, single, married, parent, executive, entrepreneur, and so on. These two aspects—where you are in life and what part of your life you focus on—both have great impact on how you Define Your Priorities.

It's also important to understand the difference between a priority and a goal. As a business executive, a goal for your division could be to hit a 10% sales growth target over the prior year. Priorities would be to make sure that your sales team is making more calls per month, the sales materials are updated, and new products roll out on time.

With research, you'll find many templates that can be used to set your priorities. I encourage you to find one that feels right for you. Writing your priorities down—seeing them in black and white—is a reminder of what you want to achieve. For me, and for many others, it is vital to do this to ...