Prioritization | HBH 001

Hello dear reader, and welcome to my first Medium article.

This article is for you if you need to make a major change in your life, whether it’s changing a bad habit, starting to exercise, spending less on clothing, etc.

To start, let me tell you a bit about myself, so you know who you’re giving your attention to, and why it’s worthwhile.

My name is Connor MacLeod, and I live in London Ontario, just outside of Toronto (for those of you who do not live in Canada or know our geography). I am an online personal trainer, who focuses specifically on helping young professionals lose weight. Most importantly, I’ve been coaching others since I was literally 15 years old, so although I’m only 25, I have a full decade of experience in helping others change their health and fitness behaviours.

One thing that has become crystal clear to me in those 10 years, is that it’s absolutely critical to know where your priorities lie, before trying to make a change. Knowing your top priorities in a precise way gives you a simple framework from which you can make decisions day to day.

Without knowing your priorities, you’ll drift from one idea to the next, change your ideas often, and fail to follow through, or make the sacrifices necessary to succeed in the areas of life that are most important to you.

Here’s how to do it.

The Prioritization Plan

1. Start with a blank sheet of paper, or a blank document.
2. Write out everything that is important to you.
3. Shorten your list by looking for things that are similar, then reducing them to a broader category. For example, if you love playing soccer, and hockey, broaden your category to participating in sports. Do this throughout the list to reduce it in size.
4. Select your top 5 broad categories. Common themes I see are family, friends, health, wealth, career, school, sports, music, and art. With that said, don’t limit yourself to this list if I’ve missed something important to you.
5. Have head to head battles between your top priorities to determine where your values truly lie. If your top 5 are, wealth, friends, family, and painting, and you aren’t sure where something should go in your list, ask yourself the following question. “If I could only have ________ or _________, which would I choose”? Repeat this exercise until all 5 are in a clear order.
6. Now that you have your priorities laid out clearly, stick them somewhere you’ll see them often like your phone wallpaper, or beside your bathroom mirror, and keep them visible until they’re deeply ingrained in your head.
7. Ask yourself regularly as you make daily decisions, whether you’re spending your time and money in alignment with your priorities. If you aren’t, it’s time to make some changes.

My Priorities

My personal top 5 priorities are:

1. Health (am I pain free, is my brain chemistry balanced so I can enjoy my day to day life, am I living a lifestyle that doesn’t put me at major risk for chronic disease, and am I not about to literally die).
2. Family (this includes my girlfriend, and 5 closest friends).
3. Legacy (will people remember me as positive, helpful, successful, and genuinely a good person overall).
4. Wealth (can I buy assets, still pay my bills, and care for my fam).
5. Optimal Performance (can I crush any athletic pursuit that comes up in my day to day life).

Why Health Should be #1 for EVERYONE

I often see my clients put family first, friends second, and then health third. This is a huge mistake. Almost everyone should have health ranked above all else.

First, let me go back to my definition of health, because defining terms here is important. Health, in my opinion, means that you are not about to die, you’re not in excrutiating pain, you don’t have or are not about to get a major chronic disease (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.), and your brain chemicals are balanced enough that you can enjoy the things around you.

If you’re about to die, or about to get seriously ill, or you’re seriously depressed, lets be honest, you can’t enjoy your family, friends, art, athletics, travel, or anything else the same. You also can’t crush it in your career because you’re depressed, fatigued, you look sloppy, you feel bad, and you don’t feel as confident as you could.

Essentially, good health is a pre-requisite for everything else you enjoy in life, so you need to take care of it, in order to have more of everything else.

Think of it like this. If your #1 priority is family, and you put time with them over taking the time to exercise enough, eat well, and manage your stress, you’re essentially guaranteeing that at some point, when you’re with them, you’ll be in pain, sad, unhealthy, or flat out about to die, and you wont’ be able to enjoy everything to the fullest.

Would you rather have a few more years with your family in a sub par state, or decades of time with your family, in an optimal state?

The same goes for when you compare health to any other category.

Health needs to be first. Everything else in your life goes to shit when you’re not your healthiest self.

Parting Thoughts

If you’ve made it this far, first of all, thank you for reading my first article. I hope you enjoyed.

Since you’ve made it this far, I’d love it if you could give this exercise a try, and comment your top 5 priorities below.

Also, if you want to challenge my point about health, I’m open minded and would love to consider alternative arguments, so feel free to comment those as well.

Peace and love everybody!

Connor MacLeod.