How to set your priorities for the day

Learning how to set your priorities for the day beings, and ends, with asking just one single question every morning.

Setting Priorities Begins with Reflection

I am a big fan of reflection questions. Reflect questions help align your thinking when you can’t nail down exactly where your train of thought is going. Taking the ten minutes to answer the question each morning can help you prioritize the rest of the day, week, month, or even year.

Making time every morning initially sounds like a chore. However, by making this space for reflection it saves you time in the long run. Instead of running off, cranking through a to-do list haphazardly, you start evaluating which tasks actually bring the most value to your life. Be that in getting priority tasks done at work, organizing your personal finance, or doing tasks that make you happy – you can focus on which critical tasks bring you the most reward for your time.

The One Question to Ask Yourself Every Day

“What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?“

Gary Keller

The question comes from the book “The One Thing” by Gary Keller, a successful entrepreneur who is the founder of Keller Williams, the largest real estate company in the world.

Asking this question every morning is how to set your priorities for the day.

The Positive Effects of Asking This Question

Gary Keller first started using this question when he would go into the office every morning. Asking himself this question every day resulted in him making the necessary, but hard changes in his company. Firing people who were not helping, restructuring the company, hiring talented but expensive people, and many other tough business decisions.

Eventually, all of these questions each day lead to Gary Keller building the largest real estate company in the world. Because, this question asks, what makes all other tasks easier or unnecessary? Instead of training lack-luster employees, firing them makes future goals easier to attain. Hiring talented people isn’t the best option short-term, but it does make the company run smoother and produce better quality work, over the long-term.

He then leveraged the question to his personal life. What is the one thing he can do for his family that everything will be easier?

His answer is sweet. The one thing he can do is go home and hug his wife and let her know he loves her. This builds their foundation of gratitude and ensures the foundation of love lasts long-into the future

How to Use This Question To Set Priorities

This question gets to the root of what the main problem is for the day.

Usually, the one thing that makes everything else easier or unnecessary is the action you would prefer to put off by productively procrastinating by knocking out lesser priority items.

For Example

Recently, the one thing that would make everything easier for me is automating a process at work that I have to do manually every week. However, automating it would take hours. I’d have to come in extra early, research how to code it, and troubleshoot it. These and others where all the excuses I told myself. Recently, I decided I had to do it because it would save me time going forward.

I went in early, worked on it all morning, and had it done by noon. Since that month, my workload is less by three hours every week. Freeing me up to tackle stretch assignments which have led to more skill development in other areas.

The Benefits of this Prioritization Question

Using this one question has resulted in me developing in my skills because it forced me to tackle the one thing that has the most tangible benefit.

Sometimes the results aren’t this drastic, maybe the most important thing is to go tag-up with your boss and realign your work to their priorities. It could be to reach out to colleges in another department to see what their biggest challenges are. Your biggest priority could be cooking dinner for your partner to remind them that you appreciate all they do for you. The priority changes every day, what is important, is that you get that task done.

Answering this question each day forces the priority to come front and center, and by doing it, you relieve stress on the rest of the things “you need to do” because they can become irrelevant once that one over-arching task has been complete.

Main Take-Aways:

 I mainly used this example in business content, but it can also work in other areas. Some examples of where it can apply are your personal life, your relationships, your hobbies, your skill development, and your finances. Asking Mr. Keller’s question helps your figure out how to set the priorities for the day.

Action item

Ask yourself every day this week, what’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Track your answers to these questions to see how it works for progressing towards your goals.