The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. ~Stephen Covey

What’s most important to you? What are your goals (personal and professional)? What’s on your bucket list? Now, look at your calendar. What are you doing, next week, that aligns with your priorities? Anything?

A number of years ago, I went for a walk in a fairly quiet Chicago neighborhood. I came upon a father and his young son having a conversation. The son was listing off all of the things he needed (maybe wanted) to do in the next few days. The father replied, “you have an awfully busy calendar for a six-year old”!

Several years ago I was asked to interview the staff members of a small nonprofit because they just didn’t seem to be in sync. One of my initial questions was how do you determine your priorities each day? The answer I got most frequently was “it all depends upon what’s waiting for me in my inbox.” Only one person showed me her long and short-term goals and then described how her focus on those goals determined how she would spend her time the following week.

I’ve continued to ask similar questions and, unfortunately, I continue to get similar answers. We (including leaders) have lost the ability to discipline ourselves to stay focused on the important. We allow ourselves to get sucked-in to what feels most urgent. Then we wonder why at the end of the day we don’t feel very productive.

Leaders should be setting the example. Leaders should know not only their organization’s priorities but their own personal priorities as well. How they schedule their time should directly reflect those priorities.

We’ve got more distractions coming at us than ever before! In a typical day, the equivalent of 174 85-page newspapers pass by us and we try, sometimes desperately, to maintain focus on what’s really important.

Covey gives leaders a way out of that barrage of distractions.  Schedule your priorities. Don’t prioritize what’s on your schedule.