How did you decide to do that thing?

The thing you’re doing right now. What is it? Why are you doing it?

Okay, how about now? And does that match with what you thought you’d be doing today?

So often, we describe the thing we intend to do, or the thing we’re doing, as Our Current Priority. And in some sense, that’s always true: we gave it our attention before something else. But the word Priority can be so much more powerful, so obvious, if only we’ll let it be so.

Let’s break this down a little: most of the time, the thing you’re doing is:

• a habit
• a preference
• an actual priority

If you had to think about doing it, and decide over something else, it’s probably a preference. If you’re doing it automatically, it’s probably a habit. Nothing wrong with that! Habits and routines are most of what gets anything done. If you dropped something you were in the middle of to do this thing, especially without having to think about it, it’s probably a priority. Emergencies are when a priority is threatened in the moment.

Once we give Priority the strength to mean what it should–the way you act when your child falls and starts crying, or your entire dashboard goes red–it’s easier to discern that much of the rest of our daily behavior is habits and preferences. And that’s where you can get empowered.

The likelihood of you deliberately changing your priorities is very low. That’s actually kind of the point. We want to change other stuff in service of our priorities.

So we can focus on the other stuff. If you want to change a habit, you need to plan ahead of time. (That’s a long topic, covered delightfully well in James Clear’s Atomic Habits or more concisely in Tiny Habits). If it’s a preference you’re acting on, though, I suggest you first check in on whose preference it is in the first place. Is it your stated preference? Your boss’s or client’s? Your spouse? Essentially, what are you trying to satisfy here?

By splitting off the many things that are mere preferences and habits, we give ourselves the space to actually think about the real priorities–the parts of our lives that we value the most–and to stop binning them in the same place as preferences and habits. Our priorities deserve better.

And then we can decide to act on them, even when they’re not emergencies–to make the space for what’s important, at the justifiable expense of what’s loud or has inertia.