The Importance of Importance

If you want to switch your life into „flow mode“ then you have to get straight on what’s important to you.

What is it, that you need? Do you need to have something, or need to do something? What couldn’t you live without for a longer period of time?

Important is what’s existential to your happiness.

There are a couple of things which unequivocally are important to every human being, for example:

• food
• rest
• shelter

Without those your life very quickly turns frustrating, miserable, stressful, or worse. That’s the opposite of flow and happiness.

But beyond these and other basic needs you probably deem many more things important to you. Maybe it’s important to you to learn a new language. Maybe it’s important to you to keep in touch with your friends from high school. Maybe it’s important to you to eat tasty Thai food. Or whatever… People are so very different!

There is no right or wrong in what’s important to you. It’s simply a signature of your personality. It’s a sign of your uniqueness what you find important in life.

But despite all this individuality to me there is only one way to actually express importance. To show what’s important to you, you can only do one thing: spend time on it.

The allocation of time mirrors true importance.

Your life time is the ultimate scarce resource. You only have one life of maybe 75+ years. So you should choose very, very wisely how you use those 39,000,000+ minutes.

Because if you don’t… you’ll experience stress.

Stress out of conflict arises sooner than later if you don’t spend your time on what’s important to you. If for example cooking is important to you and you don’t spent enough time cooking over the course of a week or a month then that is not want you want to do. Reality — not enough time spent cooking — is in contrast with your expectation/desire — finding enough time to cook.

Conflict and stress are the opposite of flow and happiness.

But there is more to this example. It also shows what’s truly important to you. What did you do instead of cooking? Maybe you stayed longer at work (and ordered pizza). Maybe you helped a friend to renovate his house after work.

Whatever it was you did, it was de facto more important than spending time cooking.

That’s not good or bad by itself, it’s just a fact. If how you allocate your time mirrors importance than working or helping was more important than cooking.

Very likely there always are several things important to you. And probably most of them are mutually exclusive. Either you allocate time to this or that which is important. Either you’re at work or you spend time with your spouse. Either you cook or you help your friend. Either you get rest and sleep or you binge watch a new series on Netflix.

At every moment whatever you do is an expression of what’s most important to you right now. And the longer you continue to focus your attention on one thing its relative importance to other things increases.

That’s why nature has developed signals like „feeling hungry“ or „feeling thirsty“ or „feeling sleepy“. These signals help us to find a balance between different important activities.

You might be immersed in preparing a presentation (which is important to you because you love doing presentations or you think this will impress your boss or it will earn you a bonus or whatever) — and then you start feeling hungry or sleepy or both.

These signals tell you that there are other things in life besides preparing a presentation which are also important like eating and resting.

So the basic reality of life is: You need to switch between all that is important to you. You need to switch between working, eating, sleeping, reading, playing tennis, watching a movie, sex, collecting stamps, cleaning up the house etc. etc. There are tons of more or less important things in your life.

That’s how life is. You have to deal with it.

So how do you cope with this multitude and at the same time don’t get stressed?

You can be sure of one thing:

Whatever is important does not just happen.

The weather happens, getting older happens. The state of the world changes without your intervention and you have to deal with it. But does that contribute to your happiness? Maybe sometimes. But beyond that…? I doubt it

What’s important to you, you have to take into your own hands. You have to become active. Happiness is your very own responsibility. You better not rely on other people or institutions to make you happy.

If you really let that sink in there is only one conclusion:

Explicit allocation of time is the foundation of happiness.

If you agree that happiness can only arise if you attend to all that is important to you, and you agree that important things require your time and attention, then also the conclusion should seem pretty inevitable to you.

Nature and society have done their part for some of the important matters in your life. Bodily urges take care of switching between basic needs. The structuring of the week into workdays and weekend and the limitation of work to around 8 hours/day take care of further switching between basic needs.

It’s easy to follow these patterns. Sleep, eat, work to gather money, use the money to buy food, eat, rest, sleep, and so on and so on.

It’s easy because biology and deeply ingrained habits help to allocate the time for these important aspects of life.

But what about the other important things in your life? There is no bodily trigger for „learn about astronomy“ or „spend time with kids“ or „do taxes“. Or if your body should be sending you signals they are not as strong or clear as hunger, thirst, sleepiness.

And even if they were: Bodily signs for lack of attention to an important matter are signs of stress. Feeling hungry is not feeling happy. If you feel sleepy and cannot yet go to bed you’re already unhappy, you’re already in conflict, you lost your flow.

In order to be happy and stay happy you better don’t wait for any „warning signals from within“. Rather you should proactively switch from one important matter to another. That’s what I meant by „explicit allocation of time“.

It might sound time consuming, expensive, rigid, even stressful to explicitly allocate time. And before that to work out what’s important to you in the first place. And then to stick to those allocated time slots.

Isn’t that the opposite of life which is always changing and surprising?

Yes, as the saying goes: „Life is what happens while you’re making plans.“

It sounds like a contradiction — but I can’t help it. I haven’t found a way to become happy by attending to all that’s important to me without explicitly allocating time slots. I have tried long and hard to get things done, important things, without a plan. And it didn’t work. I thought that meant „flowing with life“.

Or to be more precise: It worked out to some extend. Even pretty well from a certain point of view. But when I look closely I’m not as happy as I would like to be because matters, which are important to me, haven’t gotten the attention I wanted to give them.

There are things in work and other parts of my life which I deem important — but notoriously do not find time to focus on. How come? It’s now very obvious to me: Because finding time and spending time does not happen just because I think something is important to me.

It works the other way around: I consciously and explicitly have to allocate time to express my view of the importance of a matter. All else is just idle thinking.

If I find it important to spend time with my daughter, then I need to allocate this time explicitly. At least at a minimum level for my happiness. If I find it important to learn french, then I need to allocate time for that explicitly. At least at a minimum level for my happiness. If I find it important to write a book, then I need to allocate time for it explicitly. At least at a minimum level for my happiness.

As long as you’re happy all’s fine. No need to complicate your life with such planning. While important matters in your life receive enough of your attention to keep you happy, don’t change a thing. You’re right on track. Your life is flowing. At least basically and with regard to those matters.

However, if you’re unhappy, if important matters keep falling through the cracks… well, I guess you need to change something in your life. And that is to acknowledge the importance of importance.

It’s important you give the important matters in your life attention. That’s importance on the meta level so to speak.

As long as you don’t realise how important it is to find out what is important to you and then consciously dedicate time to those matters, you’re bound to run after happiness. It will elude you.

I think this is an example of what the ancient greeks meant by “Know thyself!”. Knowing what’s important to you is part of self-knowledge. And self-knowledge — knowing who your are, what you want, how you feel, what our strengths/weaknesses are etc. — is the foundation of life, where expectations and reality match as much as possible.

From that follows what I think is the first rule of a happy life:

Periodically spend time to reflect on what’s important to you.

Sit down for 5 Minutes or 2 hours and think about what really, really matters to you. Or maybe listen, feel, sense, seek, or whatever you want to call the activity which results in a clearer picture of what’s important to you.

Write your findings down.

Then reflect some more on how your findings correspond with how you’re using your time de facto. If you see any mismatches reflect on them. Maybe you misunderstand the seeming importance of something. Or maybe you need to adjust your time usage.

You’re the master of your life. You’re responsible. You need to strike the balance between whatever is important to you. This won’t happen magically. It’s an ongoing conscious effort. Happiness starts with the realisation that it’s you who’s in charge of every minute of your life. So you better start deciding what to do with all of those minutes. Because if not, then others will decide for you. And that sure is a recipe for unhappiness.