Welcome Back: What Did Your Audit Tell You?
Last time you tracked where your hours really go. Maybe something surprised you. An hour a day on your phone. Meetings eating whole afternoons. Hardly any time for the thing you keep saying matters most.
So here's today's question: compared with what? An audit tells you where your time goes. It can't tell you where it should go. For that you need a yardstick, and that yardstick is your priorities.
Today we'll build one in three steps. Values first, then goals, then priorities.
Step One: Name What Matters to You
A value is something you care about for its own sake. Think of it as a direction on a compass, not a place you arrive at. "Health" is a value. You never finish being healthy, but it can point your choices.
How do you find yours? Try three quick prompts.
Think of a day you felt really proud of. What were you doing? Then think of a time you felt frustrated with how you spent a week. What got squeezed out? And finally, picture yourself a year from now feeling good about the year. What happened?
Write down the words that keep coming up. Family. Craft. Learning. Health. Adventure. Security. Kindness.
Now narrow it down to three to five. Why so few? If everything matters most, nothing does. Five values you can remember will guide you far better than fifteen you can't.
Step Two: Give Each Value a Goal
Values point the way. Goals are the places you stop along it.
For each value, write one goal that serves it. Say your value is family. A goal might be "Have dinner with the kids at least four nights a week." Say it's craft. Maybe "Finish the beginner woodworking course by December."
Here's where most of us slip up, though. We write goals like "get fit" or "be better at work." They sound nice. But they're fog. You can't tell when you've done them, and you can't tell what to do on Monday morning.
A classic fix comes from George T. Doran. In a 1981 article in Management Review, he suggested goals should be SMART. His original letters stood for Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-related. You'll often see newer versions, like "Achievable" for the A. Doran himself said not every goal will tick every box. It's a writing aid, not a rulebook.
We'll keep it even simpler. Every goal needs two things.
A clear finish line. How will you know it's done? "Get fit" becomes "Run 5 km without stopping by 1 March."
A next step. What's the very first physical thing you'd do? "Download a beginner running plan tonight and pick three run days."
See the difference? The first version is a wish. The second is something you can actually start.
Want to make that next step even stickier? Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer studied what he called implementation intentions. These are simple if-then plans: "If it's Tuesday at 7 am, then I put on my running shoes." When Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests in 2006, people who made plans like this reached their goals noticeably more often. Linking a cue to an action takes some of the deciding out of it.
Step Three: Turn Goals into Priorities
So what's a priority? It's a goal you've decided gets your time first, before the rest of the week fills up.
Stephen Covey made this point with a famous image in First Things First (1994). Picture a jar. Put the big rocks in first, then gravel, then sand, and everything fits. Put the sand in first and the big rocks won't go in. Your goals are the big rocks. The small stuff will always expand to fill whatever room you leave it.
Covey's line was roughly this: don't prioritise what's on your schedule, schedule your priorities.
In practice, pick the one or two goals that matter most this season. Not forever. Just now. Those become your priorities, the things you protect when choices get tight.
Putting It Together: The Gap Check
Now grab your time audit from last level. Put it next to your priorities.
Ask yourself: how many hours last week went toward each priority? Then: how many hours went to things that served none of my values?
You'll probably spot a gap. Maybe you value health but logged zero exercise. Maybe you value learning but scrolled for six hours.
Don't try to fix every gap. Pick one.
Your Seven-Day Experiment
Choose one gap. Write one if-then plan to close a piece of it, like "If I finish dinner, then I read for 20 minutes instead of opening my phone."
Run it for seven days. At the end, check two things. How many days did you actually do it? And did those hours move from the "serves nothing" pile to your priority? If you managed four or five days, that's a win. If you managed none, the step was probably too big. Shrink it and try again.
The Limits
A quick word of honesty. Values shift over time, so revisit them now and then. Goals can also become a trap if you chase a number and forget why you wanted it. And life happens. A sick child beats a reading goal every time, and that's fine. Priorities are there to guide you, not to judge you.
Key Takeaways
- Values are directions; goals are destinations that serve them.
- Keep to three to five values so they actually guide you.
- Every goal needs a clear finish line and a concrete next step.
- If-then plans help you start.
- Priorities are the goals that get your time first: big rocks before sand.
- Compare your audit with your priorities, then close one gap at a time.