Why High Priorities Get Priority

There's a certain amount of wisdom to doing something first thing in the morning in order to make sure that they get done at all. I normally blog first thing in the morning, and on the days that I don't, I find that things keep coming up until it's rather late at night and I still haven't blogged yet. Tomorrow, I plan not to make that mistake again, especially since we have work to do tomorrow. And when school starts up again next week, I'll have to get my blogging done by 8am in order to prevent my blogging from cutting into time that I've set aside for schoolwork.

Essentially, I need to get better about blogging in the morning, and since this is a spiritual blog, I'll try to find a spiritual application for that.

I mentioned that things come up on days that I don't put blogging first. That happens on days when we don't put God first, too. Actually, things come up every day. In fact, some many things come up that we sometimes don't have time to get to them all. When that happens, it's important to do things of high priority first.

I used to think that it didn't matter if a high-priority to-do list item was put off until later in the day. As long as it got done by the time it needed to get done, will it really matter how early we did it? Well, no, probably not, but doing things early is sometimes essential to doing them at all.

An illustration: Let's say that you've got a few hours to run a few errands. Since you're a poor, but athletic young man, you ride your bike rather than taking a car. Before running the errands you need to run, you decide to check out another store first. You spend some time there, but you leave yourself enough time to still get the important things done. You head out again, but on your way to run your important errands, you get a flat tire. Since you're also a prepared young man, you happen to be carrying all the tools you need to fix the flat, so you're not stranded, but the repair still takes time - time which you no longer have. At the end of the day, you managed to get a few of your errands done, but not all of them, because you simply ran out of time, whereas you might have gotten all of your errands done, if you had decided to do them first.

So it is with everything. Sometimes, things come up, and all we're able to get done on a given day are the things we did before things came up and maybe a few quick things afterwards. As long as we're putting our highest priorities first, that's not too much of a problem, but if I put off a spiritual obligation until "later," and end up having to stay up late to fulfil it, that is a problem - a problem I intend not to have tomorrow.