To prioritize do you have to be celibate?

Certainly, if you're a nun or a priest you're first priority is obvious and easier if you live in a priory (do priests or nuns live in priories?). Which got me going on this post, because for the rest of us, it's not so easy (and I know that nowadays, it's not easy for nuns and priests, also).

The whole point being, after all my bad punning, how does anyone prioritize? Some days, a lot of days, okay, most days, it feels like every moment I'm pulled willy-nilly in a thousand different directions from the moment I wake up--because there's a million different things that need to be done at least five minutes ago, if not last week. I'm not alone in this, am I? Sound familiar?

Life maintenance alone can be overwhelming sometimes: groceries, laundry, dishes, dinner, gas the car, get the dog to the vet, and the job!! AARGH! Not to mention if you've got children...because if you've got children, the list is too long to mention...

The big problem in prioritizing: all this life stuff has to be done, BUT none of it is first priority. None of it is writing pages, working on the current painting, designing that new piece of jewelry or attending a workshop or a class (such as How to Focus and Succeed, my class at the True North Creative Learning Center, starting April 14th) to further your craft.

So how to prioritize? Luckily there's more than one way to do so, several of which I'll teach in my class because I've discovered that different approaches work for different individuals. For example, some people have great success in making different lists for different things, i.e. a grocery list, a to-do list for the house, a to-do list for the weekend projects, and a to-do list for the creative work. They are able to prioritize and manage the lists, and focus on getting it done. Me, if I'm that specific, always end up focusing on organizing and adding to the lists and then I often lose the list I need at that moment. (Has anybody else been standing in the grocery store with every list save the grocery list?) If you're like me, I have a solution that I'll share in class.

SECRET: You're creative, use your imagination to prioritize. Imagine a successful completion of a project (keep it simple). Now imagine the steps to complete the project. Now imagine the time it will take to complete each step. Double that time (all creative people are optimists) and imagine where you have spots of time to do a step.