In Stephen Covey’s 7 Habit of Highly Effective People, one of the habits is to put first things first, not second things first. If you were to write down all of your responsibilities in all of your roles, I bet your list would be a mile long.
I won’t even bother to give examples. You know that you’ve got a million things to take care of.
So how do you figure out what is the focus and priority?
Put First Things First As A Mother
We naturally tend to focus on the things that are urgent have to be done right now because there’s no other choice. You’re putting out fires all day in hopes of having a few moments of personal time thrown in there. Then after you’ve brushed your teeth for bed, you wonder where the day went and feel like nothing was accomplished, let alone having two moments of peace for yourself.
I like what Dr. Covey teaches about categorizing your responsibilities on a grid to determine what’s considered “first things first.” It’s really easy, here’s what you do:
- First, make a list of all of your responsibilities and even the things that you want to do or plan for. It might be a long list, but get a decent amount ready with a variety of items. The more the better.
- Now download the free printable I made for you below. Going up one direction is the scale of importance, and the other scale is urgency. Then in the grid, you’re going to go down your list and put the appropriate items or tasks in your graph. Take each item and truly categorize them based on importance and urgency.
Let me give a few examples. I made a list of some of my responsibilities, to-dos, and tasks that are on my plate.
- exercising
- reading to the boys
- family prayer
- planning family activities
- working on my business
- doing the laundry
- vacuuming
- going to work
- making dinner
- changing diapers
- filling baby bottles
- meditating
Then I categorized them on my importance grid to truly decide what matters. In the Important but Not Urgent grid, I listed:
- exercising
- reading to the boys
- planning activities
- meditating
As Important and Urgent, I only have:
- working on my business
- family prayer
For things Not Important and Not Urgent, I put:
- doing the laundry
- vacuuming
Then for things that may be Urgent but Not Important:
- going to work
- making dinner
- changing diapers
- making baby bottles
Here’s my example:
Go through your list of items and categorize things as they truly are. You’ll start to see that most things we feel are important and urgent truly are not, like house cleaning. Then the things that we seem to push aside thinking that they’re not important, actually are, like exercising and meditating.
Related: Meditation For Beginners – Why You’ll Your Never Give It Up
What Are Your Priorities?
Now you can see what your true priorities are, the things that are Important. Whether they be urgent or not, they’re most important. Too often we see the Not Important things all as Urgent priorities, like cleaning, but they really aren’t.
Even if all your not important things that aren’t urgent need to eventually be done, like house cleaning, you can structure your time and priorities to work those things in AFTER taking care of the important things. Soon your ideals may change to better reflect the values in your life.
“Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.” –Thomas S. Monson
For me, house cleaning is at the bottom of my list. No, we don’t live in a pigsty, but I don’t let cleaning a toilet get in front of spending time with my children. Going to work is necessary to bring in an income, but I also keep exercise on my lunch break part of my concrete work schedule because I place a higher value to it.
After I did this with a lot of my responsibilities, I could better know how to prioritize my time as I when through changing my routines and schedule. You can do the same to make the best out of every day while still feeling confident in what you’re doing.
>> Keep Your Values & Routines Aligned With This Simple Solution <<
What are some of your responsibilities that you thought were important, but actually aren’t? Food for thought.
Oh yes, first things first is even more important to a mommy. This is a great tool. Although many of us have used it for work, this is a great reminder to apply it to parenting and all areas of life. Thank you so much for reminding!
Hi Vaishnavi. I use it for almost every area of my life, even work. That’s the great thing about how it applies to everything! 🙂
Prioritizing is the key! Before I figured this out, things that were more important, but at the bottom of my list, wouldn’t get done and I was unnecessarily stressed out wondering why list making wasn’t working for me. So glad that’s not the case anymore, but this post would’ve been a help when I was struggling! LOL!
I think even when we’ve gotten into good habits with prioritizing in the past, we slip and life just happens. So I try to reprioritize atleast on a monthly basis, heavily. Glad that it was helpful, Jennifer! 🙂
This was an interesting read. I am a big fan of to-do lists and will definitely be using this printable. I tend to list everything on my to-do list and then feel disappointment if I haven’t crossed everything off it. I love your method of prioritizing as I seem to think every task is important.
Even if we’ve crossed off just ONE thing on our list, I try to consider it a successful day. Because when you’re so busy with littles or have many motherhood responsibilities, life happens. But prioritizing ensures that atleast something gets done. Then it creates better habits that domino into positive effects. That’s why I’ve put it as part of my morning routine so that I knock down big tasks every day. Thanks Ref J!
I’ve a smiliar list. It made me think of my priorities and take better control of my time.
Thanks for commenting!
It’s funny because my 8 year old always says this. They teach it to her at school. I may need to follow your method.
We always learn things from our children everyday it seems. 🙂 Thanks, Tanya!
I’ve read Steven Covey’s 7 Habit’s of a Highly Effective Family, which is also very good! It is so good to go through your priorities often. It seems like it’s easy for me to let some of the unimportant/not urgent stuff creep back up higher than it should be! And, priorities change over time. Maybe not the important things, but as life happens priorities tend to shift!
Sure thing, Becki. I think we should re-evaluate our priorities on a monthly basis at the very least. Or even when a big shift in our situations occurs, that certainly throws a wrench into things. Thanks for your comment!
I have an energetic one year old, and I’ve started list and thrown them out. This one might just work. Thanks for the post. This was very helpful.
You’re welcome, Lucy! Let me know how it works for you. 🙂
I found this article surprisingly interesting, even though I’m not a mother (I’m a guy), this shows how you women think, which seems interesting to me. The to-do list is a very powerful tool and it’s only necessary to use it for your daily tasks, I might have to use something like this as I run around doing my daily errands. I tend to get off track and half the time forget what I was suppose to do next (lol).
Thank you so much for this article. I know you’ll help hundreds, if not thousands of people so good job there.
Kind regards,
Brandon
Hi Brandon. This method of prioritizing is useful for everyone, parent or not. 🙂 Give it a try and let me know how it works for you. Thanks for commenting!
Nice stuff right here! Even though I’m not a mom this can be useful for me in the future when I (hopefully) become a dad. Even though I have no experience with parenting I have a smaller borther that needs some care every now and then and I feel that it can become a bit stressful sometime. This chart will really come in handy in those situations so that I know what to prioritze.
Thanks a lot! 🙂
You’re welcome, David. I’m sure your brother looks up to you in many ways. I too have younger siblings and hope that they feel the same way. Make sure to send this to anyone you know, because it really helps everyone. Thanks!
Great advice, long time since I have had a baby but I took the natural birth road and so has my daughter when she delivered her two babies. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for commenting, Helen! I’m sure your grandbabies are just darling. 🙂
Sarah, one thing people should remember is that their important items most likely will be different from others. So they shouldn’t feel like they are wrong if they don’t compare with others. For example the house cleaning (I am with you on this one). If someone in the family has asthma or strong allergies this might be among the most important!
What you have here is an informal form of risk analysis. These are also very useful to determine other areas of importance. I used to use them in safety analysise.
Following your chart should take the panic out of some mothers’ days.
Cheers
Helen
Hi Helen. I too have done many risk analysis in my day job. And you’re absolutely right. It DOES depend on what you value and deem important. That’s why I love this model so much because it doesn’t matter exactly what your values are. But you can clearly see how things stack up next to each other. Feel free to share, thanks!