Action Expresses Priorities

I watched a video today that was quite inspiring. The premise was that Nike gave this guy some money to shoot a commercial, tag-lined ‘life is a sport, make it count.’ So what this guy did was grab a buddy, travel around the world, and do as much as possible, go as far as possible, see as much as possible with the sponsor money he received. This lasted him ten days and he documented the entire thing, cut it, edited it, and made a pretty awesome four and a half minute video. Dispersed throughout the video are little sayings and quotations meant to reflect the mood of the video. One of which was “action expresses priorities.” Not surprising this one stuck, given it's a quote from Gandhi.

During the course of a day, there are literally countless actions that we perform. For me, like most people, this begins when my day begins. Whether it’s twenty minutes before Going the Distance from Rocky plays to wake me up, or whether that damn song has been playing thirty second loops for several minutes, I’m immediately pressed with a decision: snooze or get up. More often than not, this decision is simple. Snooze at least once, then it’s back with the decision making. From there it only adds on. Do I want to eat cereal before I shower or just grab a granola bar to eat when I get to the office? Should I bring my workout bag or should is there something I need to get home for? It’s 7:15am, should I hope that the Edens won’t be too bad, or should I back-road it and know that I’m committed to a 50+ minute commute, albeit far less frustrating?

And then I get to work, where my decisions actually matter. Sometimes. So now I’m reading emails and responding to messages while my screen stays filled with more windows than that person who shouldn’t throw rocks. And now I’m letting one conversation lead into another at a different cube when I walked away with a short-minded, immediate answer intention.

This surface-level explanation is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amount of decisions that we make on a daily, hourly, even minutely basis. And I guess it seems kind of obvious that the actions you take, the decisions you make, the options you choose, would represent your priorities. But I wouldn’t say that’s the most common belief.

I think people, including myself, will try to justify their actions with excuses when it doesn’t mesh with their preconceived notions about their own priorities. So if you were thinking about meeting up with a friend to catch up, and when the time comes, you fall back on something like ‘I’m too tired,’ or ‘I’m trying to save money,’ or any other non-emergency excuse, you can sit in your apartment all day believing ‘oh I really did want to meet them, but it’s Tuesday, and I have so much work to do tomorrow, it just would have been silly,’ but the reality is you chose something else because that thing is more important.

This concept can be a bit complicated when it comes to work. For example, I might not always choose the highest priority when it comes to the work on my desk. Some of the projects that I work on are long-term, while the rest are relatively immediate. So if I have a couple projects that have been going on for a month or two and are only 50% complete, but I have a dozen or so tiny projects that pop up and only take an hour or two, there’s a much higher percentage that I’ll choose those small projects. At the end of the day, it’s just nice to get something accomplished. If the two projects I’m choosing between differ by 100 hours in ‘amount of time left to complete,’ it’s really challenging to keep that big fish on your plate. With a fish that size, there’s no room for side dishes. So what I’m basically choosing is selfish. I’m choosing to feel a sense of accomplishment, to make a few people really happy (with such a fast turn-around time) while constantly pushing off people that will understand (well this is a big project, a few setbacks were expected).

This concept appears less complicated when it comes to personal life. Every time you talk to someone, every time you make plans with someone, every time you tell somebody no you’re showing your hand. Sure, there might be some underlying reasons, if, say, you have a crush and you’re being shy, but most of the time, the priority is clear.

You make exceptions for the people that are a priority in your life. You make excuses for the people that aren’t.